Featured on PDR in the collection The Art of Kite Flying (1430–1929)

Their capacity for flight is magical, almost animate, reflected in the names by which they are known around the world. In Greek, they are χαρταετοί, paper eagles, and the Germans call them Drachen, dragons. French children float flying stags (cerf-volant) above the earth — although “cerf”, here, is likely a corruption of the Occitan serp, snake — and in Russian, too, they are serpents of the air, воздушные змеи. Other languages reach beyond the animal world. Spanish speakers describe them as comets, cometas; Mandarin remembers when the flying forms were affixed with bamboo flutes, like airborne Aeolian harps — fēngzhēng, “wind zithers”, known elsewhere as “wind psalteries” — while the Japanese kanji 凧 combines a radical connected to wind with an element meaning towel or…