Art & Beer

Beer In Ads #578: Beer Keeps Best In Brown Bottles

April 4, 2012

Wednesday’s ad is for Schlitz from 1912, and is touting brown bottles as the best package for beer. I don’t imagine UV light was as well understood a century ago, but Schlitz assures us that even then “chemists of this country as well have repeatedly warned against the possible dangers to purity following the use [...]

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Beer In Ads #577: The Height Of Hospitality

April 3, 2012

Tuesday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon from 1911. Showing an elaborately uniformed server pouring a PBR, you can see the bottles still have silver foil and have an actual blue ribbon attached to each bottle. Now that’s fancy. The angled shape of the label looks a lot like the same shape used by Miller [...]

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Beer In Ads #576: Portrait Of A Happy Husband, By A Smart Wife

April 2, 2012

Monday’s ad is from a different time, 1940 to be exact. This Budweiser ad will have feminists tearing their hair out. The ad features a mock essay entitled Portrait of a Happy Husband, written by none other than A Smart Wife. The happy husband being portrayed is still in his suit (minus the jacket) but [...]

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Guinness Ad #113: The Guinness Turkey

March 31, 2012

Our 113th Guinness ad has a different look to it. Showing a stylized turkey (or as one commenter suggests, possibly a goose) ready for eating, but curiously still alive, the tagline explains things. “My Goodness where’s the Guinness?” I guess he wants a drink before being eaten? I don’t think I’d be smiling.

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Beer In Ads #575: For The Taste Of Your Life!

March 30, 2012

Friday’s ad completes an impromptu week of Miller High Life advertising from the 1950s. This ad’s theme is “for the Taste of your life!,” with the High Life bottle as part of an odd still life that includes bread and sausage on a cutting board, a strange sculpture of a rooster perching atop a keg, [...]

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Beer In Ads #574: Recipe For Pleasure

March 29, 2012

Thursday’s ad is yet another one for Miller High Life. This ad’s theme is a “Recipe For Pleasure,” with the High Life bottle is surrounded by food to pair with it; hot dogs, onions, hamburgers and mustard. Who’s hungry now?

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Beer In Ads #573: Enjoy Life

March 28, 2012

Wednesday’s ad is yet another one for Miller High Life, this time simply showing a bottle and beer glass on a silver tray. ALso on the tray is a fancy bottle opener and an orchid, which naturally shows how fancy it is.

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Beer In Ads #572: A Wedding Toast

March 27, 2012

Tuesday’s ad is another one for Miller High Life, this time showing a wedding couple in what looks like to me eerie tropical moonlight. Apparently it’s Waikiki, Hawai. The happy pair is being toasted with Miller High Life. It must have been a quickie wedding, there’s only four guests (or witnesses) at the reception. The [...]

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Beer In Ads #571: The Champagne Of Bottle Beer

March 26, 2012

Monday’s ad is for Miller High Life, showing the “new look” bottles in a champagne bucket filled with ice. Fancy, right? It may be I’m so used to High Life being a subpremium that nothing can persuade me to see it as a high end beer. Oh, and the new look? “Now it’s labelled in [...]

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Beer In Art #167: Jos Van Riswick’s Beer Still Life

March 25, 2012

Today’s work of art is by a contemporary Dutch artist, Jos Van Riswick, who for most of his life worked at a university as a physicist before giving it all up to pursue an artist’s life in Nijmegen, Holland. After some experimentation, he found that traditional oils suited him best, and has been specializing in [...]

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Guinness Ad #112: Draught Guinness Coming Soon

March 24, 2012

Our 112th Guinness ad is a rough draft for an ad by John Gilroy, one that I’ve never seen in its finished form. Since it shows the Brooklyn Bridge, I assume it was done when Guinness introduced draught beer to the United States, whenever that was.

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Beer In Ads #570: Three Things Wherever You Go …

March 23, 2012

Friday’s ad is another older Ballantine Ale ad, with an illustration by J.W. Wilkinson. He was active beginning in 19-teens, and most prolific in the 30s and 40s so that’s my guess for when the ad originally ran. The man in the white suit looks a little Will Roger-esque, but of course could just be [...]

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Beer In Ads #569: Two Big Reasons Why

March 22, 2012

Thursday’s ad is for Falls City beer, a Louisville, Kentucky brand that was founded in 1905 that lasted until 1978. This is the second somewhat surreal ad for this brewery, the first was Falls City Gives You More. Like that first one, they seem to favor ads that rhyme, too. The ad copy is “Two [...]

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Beer In Ads #568: Ballantine Ale Begins Where Other Brews Leave Off …

March 21, 2012

Wednesday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale from, I’m guessing, the later 40s or early 50s. Showing a couple dressed up in their finest haute couture, the woman in a stunning blue cocktail dress and the gentleman in a tuxedo with tails. They’re toasting something pretty important by the looks of it, the confetti at their [...]

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Beer In Ads #567: Go Team Red Cap

March 20, 2012

Tuesday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale. I’m not sure of the year the ad ran, but there is a clue at the bottom. It says that for 109 years it was made in Canada but as of the date of the ad was being made in the U.S. It’s a great illustration and [...]

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Beer In Ads #566: A Great Nation’s Greatest Beer

March 19, 2012

Monday’s ad is for an old Pabst brand, Andeker Beer, also referred to as “Andeker of America.” It’s from 1972 and refers to itself as “The Beer Supreme.” The tagline is great: “A Great Nation’s Greatest Beer.” The painting shown in the ad is by George Caleb Bingham. The ad says the title is Pioneers [...]

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