Monday’s ad is a 19th century ad for a New York brewery, the Geo. Winter Brewing Co. According to the ad itself, the brewery was located on 55th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. It’s from around 1900, plus or minus. The ad shows “Columbia raising a glass of beer, posed with a keg and a billy goat, the symbol of bock beer.”
Peter Damerow, from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin, has published online a lengthy paper about the origins of Sumerian brewing. Entitled Sumerian Beer: The Origins of Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia, it’s part of The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). The opening sentence gives a flavor of its purpose. “The following paper is concerned with the technology of brewing beer in the Sumerian culture of ancient Mesopotamia, which we know about from cuneiform texts of the 3rd millennium BC. and from reminiscences in later scribal traditions which preserved the Sumerian language and literature.”
It’s broken down in to seven sections:
Fig. 1: Impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal from the Early Dynastic IIIa period (ca. 2600 BC; see Woolley 1934, pl. 200, no. 102 [BM 121545]). Persons drinking beer are depicted in the upper row. The habit of drinking beer together from a large vessel using long stalks went out of fashion after the decline of Sumerian culture in the 2nd millennium BC.
I confess I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I did download the pdf of it so I can put it on my iPad. Still, just from skimming it appears fairly interesting, and a worthy piece to read over the holidays.
This week’s work of art is by the same artist as last week, Dutch illustrator and engraver Jan Luyken. His watercolor painting, The Brewer, was originally done as a study for an engraving he was working on for a larger project, a book entitled “Het Menselyk Bedryf,” or “Book Of Trades.”
Both the watercolor and the subsequent engraving, which is below, was completed in 1694.
The final engraving was included in The Book of Trades, and looked like this in one edition.
The Curious Observer, writing about Luyken’s Brewer, has the following:
At the time, low-alcohol beers, safer to drink than water, were the common everyday beverage of everyone, including children, who ate bierenbrood, bread boiled in beer.
Luyken’s image shows the brewer’s two biggest problems: barrels, and clean, fresh water. Both were scarce in Holland, the water because of textile-industy pollution and sea salt that leaked into the system of canals. Fresh water had to be imported in special ships and carefully poured into barrels.
And I also found a version of the Brewer that has been colored.
You can read Luyken’s biography at Wikipedia or at Scroll Publishing. You can also see the rest of the engravings from The Book of Trades and you can see other works at WikiGallery. Also, his biblical set, Martyrs Mirror, from 1685, can be seen at Bethel College’s website.
Our 95th Guinness ad originally ran during World War 2, and shows a painter camouflaging a gun turret. He’s done such a good job that he can’t find his beer in all the camouflage. The tagline is “My Goodness — where’s My Guinness?”
Friday’s ad is for Falstaff, from 1955. It’s another Thanksgiving ad, and the setting looks exactly like my family’s table. Look how perfect everyone looks. And how about that headline. “Along with Autumn’s Golden Best … Bring on the Falstaff.” But I do love the bottle suspended in the air, pouring down into the already full pilsner glass, presumably mere seconds from it spilling over and making a great mess. Take a close look at the bottle, it’s practically full. Even if it wasn’t, just the amount of beer flowing but not yet in he glass will make it overflow.
Thursday’s Thanksgiving Day ad is for Budweiser. I’m not sure when the ad originally ran, but clearly it’s from a time when sensitivities toward Native Americans weren’t particularly keen. That’s based on the ad copy, which after the headline — “America’s Earliest Thanksgiving … Was For Corn” — is the following:
With joyous chants and throbbing tom-toms, the Indians celebrated each bountiful harvest of maize. How the red man would marvel to see the part his native grain plays in the nutrition and individual prosperity of modern America!
Later in the ad, the copy connects corn to “its neighbor, barley,” adding. “For, from America’s costliest barley comes Budweiser to adds its distinctive, delicious taste to the fine flavors that make such a world of difference between merely eating and really dining.” Curiously, no mention of rice, though.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
Wednesday’s ad is from the 1930s, and is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, a Thanksgiving wish from the brewery “To Health & Good Cheer.” Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, that’s my wish, too.
Tuesday’s ad is another by Eugene Oge, a French illustrator who did a number of great beer adverts during his lifetime from 1861-1936. He was a major figure in the Belle Epoque and did many outstanding ads for resorts, food, and all sorts of beverages and brands. This is the third of his I’ve featured, and it’s for a presumably French beer brand, Biere de Chartres.
Monday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1950. It’s yet another of the “I was curious” series. In this installment, a couple gets dressed up to go to another well-dressed couple’s house to watch that new-fangled tee-vee that everyone was talking about. I love how the man holding the six-pack of beer is using just his fingertips.
Our 94th Guinness ad is a bit of a pun, showing the iconic Toucan underground wearing a miner’s helmet, leaning on a pick axe in one hand. In his other hand is a pint of Guinness with the slogan “mine’s a Guinness.”
