Busacca Gallery

This is an antique, hand carved, wooden folk art piece of a cat parasol/umbrella handle or cane handle with glass eyes. This is a very old umbrella handle. These are often converted to use today on canes. Shows typical wear for its age otherwise in very solid condition. This antique is from the early 1900s. Walking sticks/canes were not used solely for support. Canes were a reflection of the culture and a lady/gentleman never went anywhere without a cane. There is no damage to this handle. Great embellished antique carved cat in excellent condition. There was a time when even the most humble object was crafted with love, care, imagination, skill, and sometimes even humor. This is a rare piece. Rustic wooden folk art kitty cat sits quietly while keeping you company. Hand carved from a single piece of wood, this tiny feline looks as if he is waiting for some attention. He was acquired from a longtime collector of Midwestern folk, primitive and tramp art. The cat's expressive features, front legs and tail are all carved into the wood.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasol

That the use of the umbrella or parasol—though not unknown—was not very common during the earlier half of the eighteenth century, is evident from the fact that General (then Lieut.-Colonel) James Wolfe, writing from Paris in 1752, speaks of the people there using umbrellas for the sun and rain, and wonders that a similar practice does not obtain in England. Just about the same time they seem to have come into general use, and that pretty rapidly, as people found their value, and got over the shyness natural to a first introduction. Jonas Hanway, the founder of the Magdalen Hospital, has the credit of being the first man who ventured to dare public reproach and ridicule by carrying one habitually in London. As he died in 1786, and he is said to have carried an umbrella for thirty years, the date of its first use by him may be set down at about 1750. John Macdonald relates that in 1770, he used to be greeted with the shout, "Frenchman, Frenchman! why don't you call a coach?" whenever he went out with his umbrella. By 1788 however they seem to have been accepted: a London newspaper advertises the sale of 'improved and pocket Umbrellas, on steel frames, with every other kind of common Umbrella.'

Since this date, however, the umbrella has come into general use, and in consequence numerous improvements have been effected in it. In China people learned how to waterproof their umbrellas by waxing and lacquering their paper Parasols. The transition to the present portable form is due, partly to the substitution of silk and gingham for the heavy and troublesome oiled silk, which admitted of the ribs and frames being made much lighter, and also to many ingenious mechanical improvements in the framework. Victorian era umbrellas had frames of wood or baleen, but these devices were expensive and hard to fold when wet. Samuel Fox invented the steel-ribbed umbrella in 1852; however, the Encyclopédie Méthodique mentions metal ribs at the end of the eighteenth century, and they were also on sale in London during the 1780s. Modern designs usually employ a telescoping steel trunk; new materials such as cotton, plastic film and nylon often replace the original silk.