Lady Delores Raphus-Schilling

Now there's a name to get your tongue around. Lady Delores, or Lady D as she is now affectionately known, is an ostentatious, extinct dodo. She's a well to do toff who is as sharp as a blunt pencil and relies heavily on Deaders, her butler, a deceased mouse. She simply never noticed him dying... She hates cats with a ferocious passion, convinced they are all going to eat her.

The concept of Lady D just came to me, as these things do. I enjoy the juxtaposition of an imaginary cat, a dead mouse and an extinct bird. The characters of all three are devised so that there can be interaction between them all, which has been explained in a previous blog post.

Having already devised and built Deaders, I looked for an origami dodo and discovered there are few available, even less suitable, and narrowed it down to one. Having spent three hours on the folding only to discover a well documented (if only I'd looked at the comments before commencing) error two thirds of the way in, I abandoned the task. In the end, I drew the design straight from pictures of the finished piece made by the designer, Kazuhiro Tominaga.

I then set to with making a template of the pieces and cut from leatherhard clay. The build was straightforward which I definitely earned after the three hours wasted on the folding. The result was a well constructed, well engineered ceramic dodo reminiscent of the origami version. Lady Delores Raphus-Schilling was now tangible and here and I love her!

Kazuhiro Tominaga (2019) Origami Dodo. Available at: https://youtu.be/W6fiT1h_h04?si=L_5xkV2JYs-9-j6R (Accessed 29 July 2025)