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, some blankets and a long pipe that looks more like an oboe than a pipe, at least to me.
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?
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.
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 server on the left looks like she’s wearing a “Girl in the Moon” outfit.
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 foil!”
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 still lifes, such as this commission, done for someone in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The painting, Beer Still Life, was completed in August of 2010.
In his biography, van Riswick cites Rembrandt, along with Vermeer and Caravaggio, as influences and I have to agree that his work looks more timeless and older than many of his contemporaries. You wouldn’t look at this painting and immediately place it as having been done less than two years ago.
To learn more about Van Riswick, he has a short biography on his website. You can see many more of his paintings at Postcard From Holland, his blog Jos van Riswick — Painter, his Drawing Book and his eponymous website JosVanRiswick.com.
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.
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 anyone from that time period.
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 Big Reasons Why Fall City is the Beer to Buy.” And the two reasons? They’re class, as well. “* Pasteurized * Bitter-free.” The big face in the foreground looks out of perspective somehow; it looks too big, too in your face.
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 feet suggesting possibly New Year’s Eve. But it’s not champagne in their glasses, but Ballantine Ale. Because, according to the tagline; “Ballantine Ale begins where other brews leave off … in flavor … in satisfaction!” I also love the throwaway line toward the bottom. “The LIGHT ale that’s strong on flavor.”
