Origami Master Robert Lang (BS ’82, PhD ’86) Lost His Collection in the Eaton Fire

by Andrew Moseman 

Caltech alumnus Robert Lang (BS ’82, PhD ’86) crafted some of the world’s finest paper-folding creations from his Altadena studio. His works of origami included a denim tarantula, a tiny organist, and dozens upon dozens of other astounding pieces. Now, that collection is gone. 

Lang, a physicist –turned –origami artist whom Caltech awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009, lost both his home and studio in January’s devastating Eaton Fire. Fleeing the blaze with his family and their many animals, Lang saved only a single piece of his collection, a cuckoo clock made of a single piece of paper. 

The New Yorker has a full account of Lang’s experience:   

The studio held much of his art, and all of his tools. The laser cutter he used to help make prototypes had melted. “It’s now a pile of metal,” he said. “A 3-D printer is now a pile of ash.” Rare paper, including fig-based paper from a tiny village in Mexico, had burned. He went on, “There were correspondence letters with other origami artists over the years that were a historical record for me and perhaps for others. And then my exhibition collection was there. The pieces I had in MoMA”—a large grizzly bear, a bull moose, and a fiddler crab, all folded between 2003 and 2007—“are gone.” 

Read the full story here.