The paper creations made in Czech studio Porigami are nothing like your ordinary postcards and greeting cards. Experimenting with space, light, the texture and movement of paper—the products decorated with delicate, unique motifs are also preferred by international brands, and Tereza Hradilková keeps designing her pieces, one more beautiful than the other, with undiminished passion. We asked the founder of the brand about her work.
A paper folded to resemble an accordion that follows the silhouette of a gold, glimmering pine forest, adorned by constellations made up of tiny holes. Postcards, greeting cards, invitations and paper installations like these are made with the greatest care in the workshop of Czech studio Porigami launched by Tereza Hradilková a few years back. Tereza studied architecture and lived in Asia between 2007 and 2013—this was where she started to experiment with paper.
“My husband is a history teacher—his job took us to Tokyo and later on to Hong Kong. While I was home taking care of our newborn son, playing with paper became my hobby. I borrowed books on the topic from one of Tokyo’s libraries, I started experimenting with papercutting, origami and hand-made stamps,” Tereza says. Then she designed greeting cards in Hong Kong and contacted manufacturers and publishers with her designs.
“Some were interested in my designs but didn’t know how to manufacture them, therefore I decided to do some further research myself: this is how I came across laser-cutting,” she explains.
Laser-cutting, folding and unique printing—the techniques bringing to life the 3D elements with perforated patterns give a special character to the Porigami products. Porigami’s team moves the paper and gives it depth, while placing a large emphasis on choosing the right kind of papers with adequate quality. In addition to serving as the imprints of a nice memory or an event, the Porigami postcards and greeting cards are also decorative objects at the same time.
“Paper is relatively cheap, easy to access and suitable for creative work, for example for creating 3D shapes out of 2D sheets. Paper crafting can be fairly intuitive—it does not always have to be precise, one can also shape it like clay. One fold is enough,” Tereza says, also giving away the name of her book in the making about simple paper crafting from A4 sheets.
In addition to the items available in the online store and the stores distributing her products, Porigami is also up for custom orders. Small businesses and global companies both contact the brand with custom orders— they have already made greeting cards for hideandseek, Czech company Preciosa, as well as numerous institutions like the Prague National Theater, Rudolfinum and Porsche, too, amongst others.
Tereza’s favorite projects also include the installations made for Lane Crawford and Laufen’s showroom in Prague, as well as the pop-up children’s books made for Albatros media. In the future, she plans to dive deeper into the world of paper installations and pop-up books.
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