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The rulers of Gondor repesent the ruling class - eventually - of all of Middle Earth. Why don't the people of Gondor have such things as mantle clocks and umbrellas if they exist in The Shire? Surely they would be considered useful things and not beyond the ken of Gondorian society.
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OK, I"m going to have another go at making the point I tried (and failed) to make yesterday.
I still think that the people of Gondor might well have had these things, but I'll try a slightly different angle on why they're not described:
Because the people of Gondor are the ruling class, the descendents of the Faithful of Numenor, and the relatives of Elrond, among other things, when Tolkien describes them at the end of the Third Age he has to use his words wisely to convey the impression of (for lack of a better image right now) majesty grown over with ivy. In other words, the lack of "ordinary" objects in Minas Tirith can be read as a literary device: we don't hear about Denethor's umbrella because the Gondorians, as the remnant of Numenor about to ascend to dominance once again, are too noble to be troubled with such mundane items.
Of course, the whole thing could well be explained in this way (with no umbrellas in Gondor):
Hobbits, in Third-Age terms, are a relatively young civilization with very little attachment to the past. Gondor, on the other hand, is drenched in its past glory both in Middle-Earth and as Numenor. The Elves are even more backward-looking. Perhaps this is why the hobbits are "allowed" such things as waistcoats and handkerchiefs: having arisen relatively recently, their society most closely resembles modern times. However, this in no way detracts from my theory that "technology/art" tends to decline over time in Middle-Earth: as Child of the 7th Age pointed out, the hobbits find Gandalf's fireworks, Galadriel's rope, and the toys from Dale to be "magical," which implies that there is nothing in their "technology" that can explain these things. Also there is no indication that the other societies look on the hobbits' achievements with anything like wonder or even interest, while the hobbits themselves spend much of the story gaping in astonishment at the wide world. To extricate myself from this rhetorical knot, I'll say briefly: the hobbits' level of "technology" is the most like our own and yet the least advanced of those around it.
Having, as usual, presented two entirely contradictory views, I will now exit without attempting to clean up my mess.
