As purebred dog advocates, our default position is to always look for connections between purebred dogs — and, well, anything. Whether it’s an invention, history, celebrity, recipe, or, our launching point for this post, today’s “Word of the Day,” we dig.

Today’s word was bumbershoot which simply means umbrella, and while it sounds like it belongs in the mouth of a proper Brit — “Blimey, fetch my bumbershoot,” according to Merriam-Webster, it’s actually American slang. Etymologists at World Wide Words trace the word’s first recorded use to 1896, an apparent (if not cheeky) mashup of “umbrella” and “parachute.”

We went digging, and yes, there absolutely is a connection with actual umbrella history.

For well over a hundred years, London’s premier umbrella and walking-stick makers, Brigg of London, have carved handle tops shaped like specific purebred dog breeds. Antique umbrellas survive with detailed carved wooden Bulldog-head handles complete with inset glass eyes, and others feature hand-sculpted retriever heads with original glass eyes and a small brass collar — pieces bearing the mark of one of Britain’s most storied umbrella and cane houses. Brigg operated independently for over 115 years, from Thomas Brigg’s 1828 shop on St James’s Street, until February 1943, when wartime trading losses pushed it to merge with Swaine & Adeney — forming Swaine, Adeney, Brigg & Sons, according to the company’s own history.

Bulldogs and retrievers weren’t the only breeds immortalized this way, either: auction houses have sold canes topped with a carved Afghan Hound’s head by Reeman Dansie, and Art Deco umbrellas from the 1940s survive with leather-wrapped dog-head handles from France. It’s a real, literal connection — specific purebreds sculpted in miniature as the signature ornament atop fine English umbrellas.

Fox Umbrellas, founded in London in 1868 and widely regarded as the world’s oldest and most prestigious umbrella manufacturer, currently sells a “Gilt Classic Greyhound Head” handle alongside a plain “Dog Head” and a fox-head design.

Our favorite find, however, is the carved pug’s-head cane and umbrella handles — inset glass eyes, silvered collars — documented items in the antiques trade at auction houses like Christie’s. What makes them especially interesting to us is that those silver collars were often stamped “S. Fox,” for Samuel Fox, the Sheffield wire-drawer who invented the lightweight steel-ribbed “Paragon” umbrella frame in 1852 (Grace’s Guide) — the single invention that made mass-market umbrellas possible in the first place. One object, three threads: a purebred dog, a carving tradition, and the most important technical breakthrough in umbrella history.

There’s another layer when we dig into Brigg’s own roots. The firm that became Swaine Adeney Brigg started out in 1750 making hunting whips and equestrian leather goods for the horse-and-hound sporting set — umbrellas were grafted on later. The same houses carving dog heads onto handles were, historically, in the business of outfitting people who hunted with dogs.

In the antique market, the English Bulldog seems to be the most common dog-breed handle, with French Bulldog variants included. It’s the breed most likely to turn up on a surviving Victorian or Edwardian umbrella (otherwise, the single most common animal handle overall is the duck).

Bulldog and Greyhound heads remain the closest things to a “house style” today. Fox Umbrellas keeps its Greyhound head in current production, and London Undercover offers a modern animal-head line that includes dog alongside Duck, Eagle, Fox, and Rabbit — a tongue-in-cheek nod to those Victorian carvers. Historically, Brigg (later Swaine Adeney Brigg) is the name most linked to the antique carved retriever and Bulldog pieces collectors chase today.

Did anyone famous actually carry a dog-handled umbrella? Maybe, but we couldn’t verify it. It’s tempting to think that Winston Churchill had one since he’s been fused with the British Bulldog ever since a June 1940 Daily Express cartoon by Sidney Strube put his face on a Bulldog’s body — but that’s a cartoonist’s association, not a record of him actually holding a Bulldog-handled brolly (British slang for an umbrella).

So there it is: Bulldogs, retrievers, Greyhounds, Afghan Hounds, and at least one Pug, all carved, cast, or gilded onto the handles of London’s finest umbrellas over the past century and a half. Not bad for a word that just means “umbrella.”

Once again, look closely enough at almost any subject, and a purebred dog turns up somewhere in the history.

Image of a Golden Retriever holding his umbrella by OTSphoto/Depositphotos