Best of British

The artist couple behind summer’s prettiest parasols

A Cornwall couple’s beautiful parasols

WHEN ARTISTS Charlie and Katy Napier started out in the parasol-making business, their first commission was a dream job: a fleet of parasols for a backstage area at Glastonbury. The only trouble was, at the time, they only had one to their name. ‘It was made out of an old fishing umbrella from Argos,’ recalls Charlie. ‘We had some glitzy, colourful fabrics and Katy had sewn a canopy together and thrown it over the top so we could take a picture. It was just to get the idea across really.’

Charlie had been ‘fiddling about’ with the concept of a parasol for about a year, but with the Glastonbury job, work started in earnest. They found a supplier to make the frames and bought vintage fabrics for the canopies, fulfilling the commission ‘by the skin of our teeth’.

That was 2011. The couple spent the next few years going back to the drawing board with the design, creating their own bespoke frames and mechanisms. By the time they relaunched the parasols under their business name, Sunbeam Jackie (an old friend’s nickname), they’d had their first child and moved to Cornwall. They have since had another two children and now live and work from a 12th-century former grain store.

The process of making a parasol is a local one: Charlie delivers planks of ash to a specialist in Porthtowan who machines the poles and arms, which are then hand-sanded by Charlie and his three-strong team, and coated with three layers of Danish oil. The top and bottom ‘crowns’ and the folding parts of the frame are laser-cut from stainless-steel, welded in Falmouth and polished in Glamorgan, before returning to the workshop, where the frames are assembled by hand. ‘We use Allen keys and spanners: it’s all very lo-fi,’ says Charlie.

Meanwhile, Katy works on the canopy, putting together panels of vintage fabric that are hand-stitched by a kitemaker in the Isles of Scilly, before being treated for waterproofing and UV resistance in the workshop, and fitted to the frames. ‘All the fabrics are different, so I fit each one to the frame to make sure it has the perfect tension,’ says Charlie.

One-off parasols can be bought from their website (from £2,580), but they also produce bespoke versions where customers choose the fabrics, and they make fleets for luxury hotels. But whoever the client, each parasol is a labour of love. ‘We’re perfectionists, and that runs through to when the customer opens the parasol,’ says Charlie. ‘The idea is that it’s more than just an object.’ sunbeamjackie.com

Interview by Jessica Doyle. Photographs by Harry Lawlor Clockwise from topright Katy and Charlie Napier, with two of their designs; the ash poles and arms, with laser-cut stainless-steel joints; a design takes shape.