The word umbrella comes from the Latin word umbra, which means a “little shade;” but the name, most probably, was introduced into the English language from the Italian word ombrella. Parasol means “to ward off the sun,” and another very pretty name, not much used by Americans, for a small parasol, is “parasolette.”
It would be impossible for me to tell you how many umbrellas are made every year in this country. A gentleman connected with a large umbrella manufactory in the city of Philadelphia gave me, as his estimate, 7,000,000.
This would allow an umbrella to about one person in six, according to the census computation which places the population of the United States at 40,000,000 of people. And one umbrella for every six persons is certainly not a very generous distribution. Added to the number made in this country, are about one-half million which are imported, chiefly from France and England. You who have read “Robinson Crusoe,” remember how he made his umbrella and covered it with skins, and that is probably the most curious umbrella you can anywhere read about. Then there have been umbrellas covered with large feathers that would shed rain like a “duck’s back,” and umbrellas with coverings of oil-cloth, of straw, of paper, of woollen stuffs, until now, nearly all umbrellas are covered either with silk, gingham, or alpaca. And this brings us to the manufacture of umbrellas in Philadelphia, where there are more made than in any other city in America.
If you will take an umbrella in your hand and examine it, you will see that there are many more different things used in making it than you at first supposed.
First, there are the “stick,” made of wood, “ribs,” “stretchers” and “springs” of steel; the “runner,” “runner notch,” the “ferule,” “cap,” “bands” and “tips” of brass or nickel; then there are the covering, the runner “guard” which is of silk or leather, the “inside cap,” the oftentimes fancy handle, which may be of ivory, bone, horn, walrus tusk, or even mother-of-pearl, or some kind of metal, and, if you will look sharply, you will find a rivet put in deftly here and there.
For the “sticks” a great variety of wood is used; although all the wood must be hard, firm, tough, and capable of receiving both polish and staining. The cheaper sticks are sawed out of plank, chiefly, of maple and iron wood. They are then “turned” (that is made round), polished and stained. The “natural sticks,” not very long ago, were all imported from England. But that has been changed, and we now send England a part of our own supply, which consists principally of hawthorne and huckleberry, which come from New York and New Jersey, and of oak, ash, hickory, and wild cherry.
A “DUCK’S BACK” UMBRELLA.
If you were to see these sticks, often crooked and gnarled, with a piece of the root left on, you would think they would make very shabby sticks for umbrellas. But they are sent to a factory where they are steamed and straitened, and then to a carver, who cuts the gnarled root-end into the image of a dog or horse’s head, or any one of the thousand and one designs that you may see, many of which are exceedingly ugly. The artist has kindly made a picture for you of a “natural” stick just as it is brought from the ground where it grows, and, then again, the same stick after it has been prepared for the umbrella.