I am constantly surprised by how many similarities there are between items made 2500 years ago and today. I have been having some issues that may be related to sun exposure, so I decided I needed to get a good parasol, but I have been really striving for all of my items to be as Greek as possible. I’ve seen fancy schmancy Italian parasols, so I set out to figure out what the Greeks did. Imagine my surprise at finding this 6th-4th century BCE gem from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. The materials used (probably cotton or linen and some kind of native wood) are still a mystery, but apparently the most common modern parasol style would not have been out of place in Ancient Greece.
Update: I have found one more image of a parasol, but the site is providing no information on the vase.
Andromeda of Sparta 