The umbrella, definitely Chinese, 1600 years ago !
Joseph Needham’s immense encyclopedia, “Science and Civilization in China” (Cambridge, 1954), reminds us every day of how the Chinese are a people of brilliant inventors and also great scientists.
The umbrella as we know it was invented in China towards the end of the fourth century AD. An earlier type, made of silk, had for many centuries before been used as a chariot cover in the rain; but the umbrella proper appeared during the Wei Dynasty (386-532 AD).
Instead of silk, it used a special kind of oiled heavy paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree and was used as protection from both rain and sun.
The Wei emperor used an umbrella colored red and yellow, whereas ordinary people used blue ones.
Umbrellas became commonplace, and in 1086, we find the author Shen Kua using the umbrella as a descriptive analogy and speaking of the astronomical ‘lunar mansions’ in the sky as radiating from the celestial pole “like the spokes of an umbrella’.
By the fourteenth century silk umbrellas must have been available as well as the oiled-paper ones, for in 1368 an imperial decree announced that silk umbrellas were to be reserved for the exclusive use of the royal family.
This law does not say a lot for the Ming Dynasty, which promulgated it; but perhaps the ruling cliques thought that people with silk umbrellas were getting ‘above themselves’.
The umbrella seems at this time to have taken on quite a symbolic significance. It was used in ceremonies, and the emperor would give a special signed umbrellas to his most trusted officials.
How and when the umbrellas came to Europe is apparently not known. Perhaps paper umbrellas sold in China made their way to Europe, where the design was copied and its origin soon forgotten…
