Fulton Birdcage

The Birdcage is an umbrella turned into a small shelter. Its canopy is transparent PVC drawn down into a deep dome, so that when it is opened over the head it comes down nearly to the shoulders, and the person underneath looks out through it as if from inside a bell jar. The ribs show through as dark lines; a coloured band trims the lower edge. Closed, it is a walking-length umbrella about 94 centimetres long, with a plain crook handle.

It was made by Fulton, a London firm founded in 1956 by Arnold Fulton, an engineer born in Poland who had survived the Warsaw Ghetto and whose sister ran an umbrella factory in Stockholm. He began in a small workshop in Whitechapel and, the company says, built specialist machinery to streamline the making. In 1967, the company says, it developed a dome-shaped umbrella in clear PVC and called it the Birdcage.

Its most famous user needed to be seen. In 1988, Fulton says, the Birdcage caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Queen Elizabeth II took it up afterwards, ordering it with trims in colours to match her outfits; Fulton says it was chosen for its balance of protection and visibility. The firm held a Royal Warrant from the Queen Mother and was granted one by the Queen in 2008. Other London umbrella shops now use the word birdcage for the shape itself.

Fulton still makes it. The Birdcage 1 has a transparent canopy, fibreglass ribs that flex rather than snap in a gust, and a patented opening mechanism; it weighs a little over half a kilo and costs £25. Arnold Fulton died in 2022, and his son Nigel runs the company, which by 2006 was making about a third of the umbrellas sold in Britain.