Tim Elverston — Portfolio

Tim Elverston

As a designer, maker, and artist, Tim Elverston's earliest memories, and most powerful interests, have always revolved around our atmosphere and flight. What started as intense bird envy has become an enduring, and infinitely versatile passion.

While diverse, Tim's work is now highly refined. In 2001, he started a handmade technologies company called WindFire Designs. Tim is strongly influenced by his collected knowledge of the natural world and the material sciences. His ideas for the future are driven by a mix of desire, experimental data, and cumulative intuition.

Works by Tim Elverston

Hand Mobile

Based on proportions of human hands, the light weight and exquisite balance of this kenetic sculpture mean that it moves in even the most-subtle air currents.

Carbon, stainless steel, lead, uhwmpe laminate.

2017

The WindFire Cursor Kite

A magic trick in essence, this highly controlable kite brings the operating system back into the natural world. 2004

Very little is known about the WindFire Cursor Kite. It seems to be bringing the desktop of your computer outdoors — pfff, finally. Precise control, silk sail, nearly invisible hand-formed stainless fittings, and opposed-bow tension system make this flying cursor look edited right into the sky. But it isn't. A work of art, both as a concept and a performance — it is a flying sculpture and a social commentary.

The visual simplicity comes from considerable technological development. We are very interested in using the obvious potential of this in many ways. If you are reading this and you're having ideas, please consider inviting us to perform in front of your cameras and/or at your event.

Carefully designed by Tim Elverston, this high-end addition to the WindFire collection marks the beginning of the WindFire OS Series. Stay tuned and yes, we've got all the logical extensions in the works.

Coat for Bridget

Leather with silk lining. Shape-captured and sculpted on her body for a perfect fit.

2015

Zyzzle Foils

Designed a full set of three sizes. High-performance ultralight ram air foils. Built without the reinforcements found in consumer equivalents. Two flown as a team in image on the left.

Flowx

A transformative work in kites. These are porous, adaptive, fluid silk. A large flowing form, with minimal framing. Thriving even in intense turbulence, they use the wind as the final element in their own structure, and expand from flat into their lifting configuration as they take flight.

2010

O2 Flame

Quiet and soft, yet exquisitely precise. It offers a most-intimate experience of flight.

2011

Black 7

Paper, stainless steel, carbon fiber, thread. Moving in the slightest air currents, the form finds the patterns of the room.

2007

Wire mobile

5 sections of stainless steel wire delicately balance as jewelry for trees.

2005

Bridget with Flute

Stainless wire on black board.

2010

Necklace

Detail of clasp and necklace design. Turquois, hemotite, and stainless steel.

2009

Tear Drop Lamp

Paper, carbon fiber, spectra.

2008

Bone Kite

Completely adjustable and modular kite.

2010

Plasma Flames

Based on light through water droplets on glass, the plasma flames were the first public showing of the Flame design by Tim Elverston.

2003

LaceWing Flames

Kite design by Tim Elverston. Painted by Ruth Whiting. The Flame is a controlable four line kite designed to fly in very light, to zero wind.

2008

Silk Curtains

Frictionless, minimalist curtain design with tension towers and spectra line suspension.

2013

DOTAshade

6050 square feet. Modular industrial shade solution. 8 hexes, 8 diamonds, featuring Hermaphroloops.

2013

Triple Light

Custom shade design with adjustable heights.

Dark Light

Giant structural origami lamp in paper, housing a down-facing spot light. Background paintings by Ruth Whiting.

2007

Giant Origami Lamps

Two 10' origami lamps in paper. Colors change with sound activation. Tunnel by Marc Ricketts of GuildWorks.

Dust Goggles

Leather and glass desert goggles with a soft breathable seal that avoids vents—which avoids dust.

2009 — How to make your own dust goggles

Line Wheel

A jig for making many indoor quad line sets all at once. Threaded rod at the center makes the wheel travel, thus distributing lines across the bars evenly, and prestretched.

1994

Origami kite

Folded Spectra laminate, carbon fiber.

2009

Stainless Necklace

5 gauges of stainless steel.

2011

Edging Machine

HDD bearings, screws, wood, sewing foot jig, stainless wire, carbon fiber.

2010

Flow4x

Silk quadline kite. Reversed controls. Silk, carbon, spectra, stainless steel.

2012

Direction

Carbon, spectra, polyester.

1997

Dacron tape folding jig

Folds double stick dacron tape in half and removes the backing for use in the Synergy Deca series of kites by Marc Ricketts.

1996

Plug Flowers

Stainless wire and Edison socket. Made for Ruth.

2000

Line Baskets

Baskets made from reused paraglider lines.

2015

High-performance handmade baby stroller

Carbon, aluminum, stainless steel, oak, polyester. Weighs only 4 pounds. Has loops for restraint belt made of silk. Folds up to be extremely small, rides like a dream.

2016

iPhone case

Leather, double braid spectra dacron line, spectra thread.

2016

Bike trailer

Wood, aluminum, stainless steel wire, fabrics. 8 lbs, for kids, rides like a dream.

2018

How to make a Hover Pencil

Make your own Hover Pencils over your desk or work table with a nearly frictionless suspension system. Tim Elverston designed this method for making a writing instrument hover over any work surface. This video shows each detail of how to make your own.

The Air-YO™

2002

The Original Air-YO™ was carefully designed by three crazy kite builders named Tim Elverston, Curtiss Mitchell, and Ruth Whiting. The Air-YO is a toy, but it has its roots in kites. During more than twenty years of flying kites and over ten years of building kites professionally, we've seen kites do some pretty amazing things. One day, many ideas about stuff that flies became clear in our heads and the very first Air-YOtm was put together.

When the Air-YO obeyed us for the first time, it was like magic jumped out of the air and was transmitted through the string directly to our waiting fingertips. We had invented something very special—an object that would give the people who touch it a brand new perspective on what it means to control something that is in flight.

The Air-YO is a tethered-omnidirectional-planing-flying object. It is also the first flying ring toy that doesn't need to spin as it flies. The Air-YO is a training toy for those who want great things, it is a toy to hone your hand-eye coordination, or to make a timid arm nimble again. The Air-YO is a toy to help you see the invisible.

It is a family toy to confuse a dog with. It is a toy for when you are peacfully alone. Yet it can draw people together with magnetic force. The truth is that the Air-YO can be more than just a toy, because when people tell you that there are limits in life you can say: "How can that be?… I can Air-YO" and you can mean it!

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