The City of Umbrellas — Irrawaddy delta workshops where elaborately lacquered parasols have been handmade the same way for two hundred years
Pathein (also known as Bassein) is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar and the capital of Ayeyarwady Region, situated in the Irrawaddy delta where multiple river channels braid through rice paddies on their way to the Andaman Sea. The city is nationally famous for the Pathein Parasol — an elaborately lacquered, hand-painted cotton umbrella produced in small family workshops that have operated continuously for over two centuries. The process is entirely manual: bamboo frame construction, cotton covering, lacquer application in multiple layers with hand-painted floral designs. The Shwe Sar brand…
Pathein was an important port in the Mon and Burmese kingdoms, sitting at the western delta exit of the Irrawaddy trade system. The British captured it in 1825 during the First Anglo-Burmese War and developed it as a rice export port — the Ayeyarwady delta became the rice bowl of British India under colonial irrigation schemes, and Pathein was one of the key export points. The parasol tradition likely dates from the earlier Konbaung Dynasty period, when lacquer work was a major court craft; the trade parasol emerged as a marketable product during the colonial period when European buyers provi…