Monday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale from 1947. It features a woman in a white dress with white roses in her hair. Is that really who drank ale in the late 1940s? Ah, well. If I’d just come back from the war, I suppose I’d have a beer with her, too.
Guinness Ad #2: There’s Nothing Like A Guinness
The second Guinness poster on our John Gilroy odyssey is also one of my favorites. The tagline is “There’s Nothing Like A Guinness” and features the personified pint of Guinness opening its mouth for the last drop from the bottle.
And here’s another version, a square one, of the same basic artwork.
Beer In Ads #20: Biere Chatelaine
Tuesday’s ad is from France, most likely in the first few decades of the 20th century. Despite the fact that you can see there’s a signature on the poster, no source I can find identifies who the artist is. Similarly, I don’t know what brewery the poster is advertising for. The poster reminds me a bit of the old Coppertone ad where the dog is trying to pull off the little girl’s bathing suit. But in this case the damn dog is pulling on the waitress’ dress and spilling the beer! Bad dog!
Beer In Ads #18: Leonetto Cappiello’s Bieres de La Fauvette
Friday’s ad is French, and most likely was created at the beginning 20th century. It was painted by Leonetto Cappiello, an Italian illustrator considered to be the father of modern advertising.
From one biography:
Cappiello was self-taught, began as a caricaturist and escalated to the early 20th century’s most acclaimed European artist. Cleverly linking products with vivid, memorable images, he produced 1,000 imaginative posters for beverages, ballet, literature, plays, travel and music halls in four decades. Leading the Art Deco movement, Cappiello’s techniques are still vital to modern advertising.
I don’t know what brewery this was done for, but essentially it translates as “Beer of the Warbler.”
Beer In Ads #14: Call For A Valley Brew
Monday’s ad is one I have a reproduction of hanging in my office, a gift from my friend Steve Altimari, who is the brewmaster at Valley Brewing in Stockton, Calif. Valley Brewing sells the posters and uses the image in some of the promotional materials, but it’s 50s advertisement from the old El Dorado Brewery, a brewery that had been in Stockton from 1855 until it closed for good in 1955. You gotta love old cheesecake.
Beer In Ads #13: Schlitz Here’s One I Can Understand
It’s the first day of the new year, of course, and this year I’ll be highlighting beer ads every week day — Monday through Friday — instead of just once a week on Thursdays. I just have too many already collected that I think are wonderful and merit sharing, so I decided to make 2010 the year of the beer ad here at the Brookston Beer Bulletin. Some will be old, some from mid-century (the 50s, 60 and 70s) and other will be more contemporary. The only unifying theme is that I think they’re artistic, more clever than the usual beer ad or have something else going for them. Feel free to suggest an ad you like and, if I agree, I’ll put it in the queue.
The year’s first ad, from Schlitz, was published in 1952. I don’t know who the artist was, but it looks like many other Schlitz ads from the same period, so it may have been a house illustrator. But it seemed appropriate for today because it’s set in an art museum, where I believe all of these ads belong.
Here’s One I Can Understand
This man may not be an art expert, but he knows fine beer when he tastes it. There are millions of people like him … people who like the taste of Schlitz so much that no other beer is in the picture for them.
Beer In Ads #12: Bieres du Croissant
Today’s ad looks celebratory, for New Year’s Eve, though I don’t know much about it, except that it’s from 1895.
Anyway, drink up. Hoppy New Beer.
Brewing Up A Civilization
There’s a wonderful article today in Germany’s Der Speigel showcasing University of Pennsylvania Archaeologist Patrick McGovern’s theory that alcohol is responsible for nothing short of civilization itself. Titled Alcohol’s Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization, the story begins:
Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks so. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.
It turns out the fall of man probably didn’t begin with an apple. More likely, it was a handful of mushy figs that first led humankind astray.
Here is how the story likely began — a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message — whatever that was, I want more of it!
This is nothing new if you’ve been following McGovern and other scientists coming to similar conclusions as new evidence is continually being found to support the idea that it was the desire to brew beer that caused man to settle down and grow crops, leading to civilization’s genesis. But it’s quite nice to see it gaining traction in mainstream media.
McGovern’s latest book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. McGovern is also the scientist that worked with Dogfish Head Brewery to create Midas Touch, Chateau Jiahu, along with their other historically based beers.
An Egyptian wooden funerary model of a beer brewery in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Beer In Art #57: Kelly Murphy’s Wassailing
After a few more mature works recently, today’s work of art is more playful and child-like. It’s by Kelly Murphy, who primarily write and illustrates children’s books, along with freelance work in similar fields, like toys and film. In 2007, on her blog, Murphy shared her work, Wassailing.
Wassailing is, of course, a traditional English and European custom that took place around the holidays, sometime around Christmas and in other traditions into mid-January. To read more about it, there are interesting accounts at the Hymns and Carols of Christmas, About.com, Time Travel Britain and White Dragon.
There also the drink Wassail, which I wrote about a couple of years ago after the release of Full Sail’s Wassail at Here We Go a-WASSAIL-ing
As for Kelly Murphy, here’s some more info from her biography.
Kelly Murphy is an award-winning illustrator and animator working predominantly with traditional and mixed media. Born and raised in southeastern Massachusetts, USA, she studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. Since earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1999, Kelly has been actively freelancing across the various fields of editorial illustration, picture books and poster illustration as well as character design for both the film and toy industry. An accomplished children’s book author and illustrator, Kelly’s books have been published by America’s leading publishing houses and her tenth children book is already due to be available in the Fall of 2009.
And there’s a good overview of her other illustration, art and books at her website and her blog, Who the Sh*t Drank My Beer.
Beer In Ads #7: National Premium & Turkey
Today’s ad is more modern, because it’s Thanksgiving Day and I wanted to use one that was done for the holiday. This juicy turkey ad was for National Premium Beer, subtitled a “Pale Dry Beer,” and brewed by National Brewing of Baltimore, Maryland from 1936-1995. While accounts of the brewery’s origin vary from around 1850, 1855 or 1872 (and under several different names), after Prohibition ended, it returned as National Brewing with its most famous beer being National Bohemian, or “Natty Boh,” which today is owned by Pabst and brewed by Miller. This ad is for their premium beer, and is from the 1950s. Hoppy Thanksgiving.
