Kites: The Art of Using Natural Materials

In Kites: The Art of Using Natural Materials, John Browning shows how he uses natural materials to make beautiful kites; kites that fly. In the book Browning balances the visual appeal of Nature's riches with the universal appeal of kites, their ephemeral lightness tethered to the kite flyer’s desire to be air-borne, defying the pull of earth’s gravity. This combination of beauty and practicability is evident in the colourful images—which inform as well as delight—of kites both fixed and in flight. Throughout the book the images demonstrate how the different shapes, colours, and textures of natural materials have been transformed by Browning into fragile yet flight-worthy structures that appeal to the mind, to the eye, and to the imagination. This book, filled with colourful images, shows many examples of natural materials—leaves, plants, trees, paper, and bamboo—and how they have been brought together to create the kites. Conceived as works of Art, constructed as kites, and realized as flying structures.