Our 109th Guinness ad is from around 1945, an original by John Gilroy. I’ve never seen a final version of this ad, but I have to assume it was used at some point. It shows a cellist so engrossed in his music, and so strong thanks to the Guinness under his music stand, that he’s sawed his cello in half. I didn’t realize horsehair was so sharp. The tagline is, of course, “Guinness for Strength.”
Beautiful the way the first G in “Guinness” reflects the scroll at the top of the neck of the instrument. But isn’t that a double bass rather than a cello?
You know, I think it is a double bass. My wife plays cello, and I think I just wanted it to be a cello for some reason.
of course it’s a bass you don’t stand with a cello
The musician is standing – a cello’s too short to play standing up unless you’re a midget with long arms or make its peg 2+ feet long. “Artistic license” created an instrument that, on view, is too big to be a cello, but seems (to me) to be too small to be a bass viol (now called “double bass”).
But perhaps bass viols of the 40’s were smaller than what I’ve seen since the mid 60’s in the classical world; for sure the jazz & rockabilly cats played ones that were a lot taller & wider than the one in the ad.