Envelope and Letter Folding:

Why the Heck Would You Want to Fold an Envelope?
If you are not into envelope and letter folding you may wonder why one should go to the trouble of folding up an envelope when you could just buy one from a stationery store. Well, first off, it is the very nature of hobbies that they tend not to be entirely practical. In spite of that, hand folding letters and envelopes is one of those rare intersections of decoration and practicality, where paper folding produces the satisfaction of making something useful and novel. The folds can be extremely clever in their attempts to reach a number of basic goals: to make the largest possible envelope from a given piece of paper, to latch or remain sealed with out need of adhesive, to meet postal requirements and to be attractive. One of the "Holy Grails" of envelope and letter folding is to create a fold which not only latches, but can't be unfolded--sealing it shut like a glued envelope. No one seems to have managed this feat, so far.

A Really Brief History
The use of pre-made envelopes for standard mail is a relatively new practice. Before their use became common it was standard to fold the sheet of paper a letter was written on in a way making it suitable for posting. In England it was not until 1840 that the cost of posting a letter was based on it's weight rather than the number of sheets or distance to be sent. The minimum rate was one penny for a letter not weighing more than one half-ounce. An envelope allowed more than a single sheet to be sent at once.

This Site
Methods of making letterfolds and folded envelopes have been compiled by the Envelope and Letter Folding Association in a series of booklets entitled Envelope and Letter Folding (1st, 2nd, 3d and 4th editions) and I will (I swear)be posting a number of folds from them here in the coming months, years, decades, millennia, whatever it takes... I will upgrade the scans to redrawn art as time permits. (Time is short, however, so the site tends to update slowly, really slowly.) The following are some basic folds to start with:

Origami Symbols
Basic Letterfold
Fern Letterfold
Hawk Envelope
Valentine Envelope
Fold Index

If you have questions or suggestions or would just like to see more samples added to the site, please e-mail me at ghhcom@aol.com.
However, I should note that I a terrible corespondent. I will work on getting contact info for people to order the ELF booklets directly from the ELF if possible. Thanks to everyone who has written and sent samples which I look forward to posting in the future. My apologies to anyone (i.e., everyone who has written) I have not gotten back to in a timely fashion.
No commercial e-mail (i.e. spam) , please.
Since I love sharing arcane knowledge I am delighted to note that this site, in spite of or because of its obscure nature, has been featured as a USA Today Hot Site. Grateful thanks to John Cunliffe for permission to post his wonderful instructions.