The Drachen Foundation is a non-profit educational corporation, established in 1995 and devoted to the increase and dissemination of knowledge about kites worldwide. It takes its name from the German "Drachen," which means "kite" or "dragon."
In pursuit of its mission, the Foundation emphasizes the following activities:
- It develops workshops, curriculum, and touring exhibits about the art, science, history, and cultures of kiting; it supports selected projects and special events. Major workshops and conferences have been organized at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the University of California at Berkeley, and the Art Kite Museum in Detmold, Germany; kitemaking workshops for school children, artists and art students, and community members are sponsored on a regular basis nationally and internationally, often in conjunction with cultural festivals. The Foundation also develops lessons to bring kite making into the K-12 curriculum. Drachen-created touring exhibits have been hosted at art and science museums throughout North America; the Foundation has also staged exhibits of historic and contemporary kites at Dieppe, France, Jaipur, India, and elsewhere around the world, as well as at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego and the World Kite Museum in Long Beach, Washington. Projects have included assistance in refurbishing the kite shed at Harvard University's Blue Hill Weather Observatory, outside Boston, in continuous operation since 1885.
- It publishes books and an online journal and newsletter; it operates a website. Among the Foundation's publications are Japanese Kite Prints by John Stevenson (issued by University of Washington Press), Kites: Paper Wings Over Japan by Tal Streeter, Scott Skinner, Masaaki Modegi, et.al., Hidden Symmetry by Istvan Bodoczky, and several pamphlets about aspects of its collections or activities. Drachen Foundation Kite Journal is an online publication, posted three times a year, that follows kiting globally. Drachen Foundation Newsletter will resume online monthly publication in January 2006.
- It funds kite research globally. The Foundation funds a range of conservation and research projects, from historical and cultural studies of the significance of particular developments or traditions in kiting to field research using kite aerial photography and other kite applications. It also supports conferences and symposia to share research results. Projects have included: the non-intrusive study of high-flying, insect-eating bats by Professor Ben Balsley of the University of Colorado; the conservation and replication of historic antique kites by Jan Desimpeleare of Wevelgem, Belgium; a study by writer Eden Maxwell of an 1890s William Eddy kite at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.; a study of the signature Southeast Asian gurion kite by Orlando Ongkingco of Manila.
- It archives kiting materials and kites. In order to document world kiting, the Drachen Foundation archive includes a collection of choice kites, kite-making tools (often hand-made), and related paraphernalia. It has collected examples of kites important in the early history of weather prediction and in the development of aeronautics. It also collects representative and unusual examples of contemporary kites. In the historic category, Drachen owns the largest holding of kites and artifacts of Samuel Franklin Cody, the American aviation pioneer of the turn of the nineteenth century who built and flew the first airplane in England. It holds an original tetrahedral kite cell from inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who became interested in flight in his mid-seventies. It has a large holding of cultural kites from Japan, Cambodia, India, Laos and China (among other countries), a substantial trove of the royal kites of Thailand, and fifteen Korean fighters more than a century old. It also has contemporary examples of traditional leaf kites from Oceania, probably among the first kites ever made. Drachen also assembles artifacts associated with kite flying-stamps, postcards, coins, paintings, drawings, posters, cartoons, porcelains, pins, decorative objects, oddments. In addition to these three-dimensional artifacts, the archive includes personal papers on kites and kite-makers as well as books, newsletters, videos, compact discs, and photographic slides on kiting.
- It operates the Drachen Study Center in Seattle. The Study Center is located at Drachen Foundation Administrative Offices, 400 Roy Street, Suite 200
Seattle, Washington 98109. Office hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday. The Study Center is open by appointment: 206-282-4349 or information@drachen.org. Under certain conditions, historic kites may be examined as well.
- It sells original kite kits, publications, and materials through its online store. The Foundation works with international kite makers to develop inexpensive kite kits, using materials (such as paper and bamboo) traditional to their regions, for educational and community use. It also sells carefully selected books about kiting worldwide, and materials (such as Japanese bamboo) not easily available through commercial outlets.
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