Kite Personalities - Harold Writer

A modest two-bedroom rambler in Seattle was the site of Harold Writer's “kindly old Geppetto's” kite workshop. Born in Middleburg , Florida , he moved to Naches (near Yakima in south-central Washington ), where he finished high school. After high school he apprenticed as a wood floor finisher. He made his first kite that really flew as a teenager. “Popular Mechanics came out with plans, a series of four books, which were only for boys [snicker],” said Harold. “I constructed only a few of these, then found GIRLS.”

Kites took a back seat until the 1950s. With children of his own, he made box­ kites for them with Elmer's glue (“the most wonderful thing ever invented”), paper and sticks made from discarded cedar fence posts. “But unfortunately, my children grew and grew out of kites, but this is where I was just getting started.”

By the 1960s and ‘70s he was making Eddy kites out of fabric. Many of his designs were standards—found in the Pelham book. Judicious fabrication and experimentation made him settle on Cody kite de­signs as being “his” kites. Asked if doing the same kite design over and over again was tedious, he replied, “You have to do something many times to learn and to perfect it.” He has proven just that, as all his kites are terrific fliers. Writer personally documented each kite's construction in writing. The data covers everything from the elements of design, materials cost, and construction time. His work­shop was equally “precisioned,” with everything in its place: rows of bottles and fasteners, tubes and dowels, “custom-built-for-low-­ceiling-workspaces,” roll-about cutting table. A rebuilt Pfaff/130 ($4 investment of purchased parts found all over the city) was his trusty aid. “Making kites put me in my own space where I could sew the world away, but flying the kite later brought me back again.”

Harold combined the new sail materials of contemporary kite making with “old-school” wood-working techniques to make sculptural kites that functioned beautifully. As interest in historical kites grows, the tools and techniques that Harold Writer demonstrated become more timely and important.

Link here and click on images for a look at Harold’s kites.

Adapted from an article in 1991 Kite Pin Invitational, a Drachen Foundation publication (1995)