Pink Sakura Japanese Umbrella 'Sakurairo'

Pink parasol with cherry blossom branches and petals falling into a drift

Pink, and pink on the pink. This parasol has a canopy in a pale pink with a branch of cherry blossom at the top right, a swallow at the top left, petals falling across the whole canopy and a drift of fallen petals gathering along the bottom edge, so the parasol has a top and a bottom the way a landscape does. It is the pinkest thing in the shop.

It is the parasol for a person who wants the cherry blossom and wants the whole thing to be that colour.

The name, Sakurairo, is cherry-blossom colour, the pink of the canopy, and the print is the blossom itself.

The frame is wood: a straight shaft, a ring of thin ribs radiating from a red-lacquered cap at the top, and a second ring of stretchers beneath that push the ribs open, with a runner that slides up the shaft and locks. The canopy is a cloth with the look of oiled paper, not paper, which is why it survives a shower, a suitcase and a child, and why the print is even to the edge.

Carry it closed by the shaft and open it with the runner, which slides up and clicks. It is a parasol first: made for sun and for photographs, over a yukata or a kimono at a festival, a wedding, a garden, and it will shrug off a few drops of rain but not an afternoon of it. Opened and hung from its cap, it is a lamp shade without the lamp.

The drift is the detail: the petals gather along the bottom edge of the canopy in a band of deeper pink, the way they gather on a path in April, and the falling petals above it are the same shape scattered. The swallow at the top left is the one dark mark.

Every umbrella in the collection is photographed open, standing on its cap, on the same pale ground at the same scale, so the pages compare: they are the same size and the same frame, and the canopy is the difference.

Dry it open if it gets wet, out of the sun, and close it only when the canopy is dry. Store it closed in its sleeve. The ribs are thin, so it is carried, not thrown.

From across a garden it is a pink circle. From close the branches show their blossom, the petals their fall, and the drift its band. It is the parasol for a white yukata and the week the cherry is out.