Lockwood Umbrellas

Lockwood Umbrellas is a London manufacturer working out of a North London manufactory, with its retail presence at the Tea Building on Shoreditch High Street. Each umbrella is built on a Grade A steel frame with hand-sewn reinforcements and lathe-turned brass fittings, construction the company frames as a deliberate return to centuries-old umbrella-making methods rather than a mass-produced frame.

The materials list is unusually specific for a modern maker: canopies in water-resistant cotton, handles in ethically sourced buffalo horn, and shafts turned from a choice of hardwoods — maple, chestnut, whangee bamboo, or bark ash — sourced from sustainable woodlands. That range of named timbers, alongside the horn handles, puts Lockwood's construction closer to the bespoke English shooting-and-country tradition of umbrella-making than to a fashion accessory line, built as pieces intended to be rebuilt and re-covered rather than replaced.

For a comparatively young addition to London's umbrella trade, Lockwood's combination of a steel-framed, hand-sewn build with sustainably sourced horn and hardwood detailing places it in direct company with the city's older manufacturers on construction quality, even without their multi-generational history.