The Story of the Umbrella

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 12, 20 March 1902, Page 29

The Story of the Umbrella

The history of the umbrella can be traced beyond the classic ages of Greece and Rome into the dim and doubtful twilight of Chaldean antiquity (says the ' Pall Mall Gazette'). La3 r ard in his excavations on the site of Nineveh, of which so many trophies are to be seen in the British Museum, unearthed a bas-relief representing an Assyrian monarch sitting in state under some variety of parasol. In China and Japan umbrellas have been in use as far back as our knowledge goes. The flimsy little paper Japanese sunshades had screened the coquettish heads of slant-eyed musmes for many generations before it occurred to British housewives of the middle classes to use tasteless imitations of them as fire-grate ornaments. What was more extraordinary (says a writer in the ' Home Messenger') was that the full war attire of the Japanese warrior included not only a fan, but an umbrella of imposing dimensions. It was a long time before the umbrella became, so to speak, acclimatised in this country. In an old iliHuminated manuscript copy of the Psalms of David, now in the British Museum, there is a representation of a king with an umbrella held over him. No doubt the use of umbrellas in Eastern lands was a matter of common knowledge at that time, through the observations of travellers. In the 17th century tiiey appear to have come into use In Italy, and about the beginning of the 3 Bt h English ladies seem to have adopted them to some extent ; but the use of them was looked upon as a fashionable feminine refinement, and a man would no more be seen with one than with a lady's workbag.