Kieron Jansch’s first kite was a diamond-shaped stunt kite with a tail. His friend had bought it for him, and Jansch loved it, but also managed to run it repeatedly into the ground. At the time he was studying sculpture in university in London, and couldn’t afford to buy a new one after his first flyer was pulverized. So he decided to construct one on his own, stitching together materials available to him for free through the art school. “It was very utilitarian,” says Jansch. “I didn’t pay much attention to how it looked. I just wanted it to fly.”
Since he first started making kites in the mid-’90s, Jansch has designed some 50 or 60 by hand. Today his kites are a bit more complicated than the introductory stunt variety. Each kite costs him some 300 hours of his life and several thousand dollars from his bank account. “The rate of production has slowed down as I’ve gotten better at it,” says Jansch. “As the years roll on, my tastes became more specialized and I started thinking more about design than just aerodynamics.”
via Wired
