IF THE ancient Chinese warlord Wang Kuang travelled forward in time from 189 AD to 2023, lots of things might make him scream. The fearless warrior might quake at the sight of an aeroplane or weep to behold a TV, but one thing is certain: an umbrella wouldn’t elicit a blink.
Evidence of collapsable umbrella stays was discovered in his tomb and dated back to 25 BC, and historians believe brollies are far older than that.
TS Crawford, author of A History of the Umbrella, writes that it’s “safest” to say the first umbrella was constructed “over 3 000 years ago”. Its design was perfected in the 1850s, and since then it has remained essentially the same.
That, frankly, doesn’t make sense. One only has to use an umbrella once to realise that they’re bad at their job – spokes poke, canopies tear and the whole thing easily flips inside out.
Since the millennium, self-styled disruptors in Silicon Valley have reinvented everything from buses to tents but, somehow, the humble umbrella perseveres practically untouched.
Our appetite for better options means customers have been let down. Almost a decade ago, when he was an overworked IT student at the University of Haifa in Israel, Tal Kitron spent £121 (then R2178) on an umbrella.
It didn’t have spokes or a canopy – “It seemed quite revolutionary,” the 35-year-old
