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68cm x 46cmThe biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.Cliché or not, that’s roughly what happened in 2008 when hundreds of artist John Gilroy’s oil-on-canvas paintings started to appear on the market. The canvases had been painted by Gilroy as final proofs for his iconic Guinness beer posters, the most recognized alcoholic-beverage advertisements of the mid-20th century. Before most collectors of advertising art and breweriana knew what had happened, most of the best pieces had been snapped up by a handful of savvy collectors. In fact, the distribution of the canvases into the hands of private collectors was so swift and stealthy that one prominent member of the Guinness family was forced to get their favorite Gilroys on the secondary market.One of those early collectors, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls seeing several canvases for the first time at an antiques show. At first, he thought they were posters since that’s what Guinness collectors have come to expect. But after looking at them more closely, and realizing they were all original paintings, he purchased the lot on the spot. “It was quite exciting to stumble upon what appeared to be the unknown original advertising studies for one of the world’s great brands,” he says. But the casualness of that first encounter would not last, as competition for the newly found canvases ramped up among collectors. Today, the collector describes the scramble for these heretofore-unknown pieces as “a Gilroy art scrum.”Among those who were particularly interested in the news of the Gilroy cache was David Hughes, who was a brewer at Guinness for 15 years and has written three books on Guinness advertising art and collectibles, the most recent being “Gilroy Was Good for Guinness,” which reproduces more than 150 of the recently “discovered” paintings. Despite being an expert on the cheery ephemera that was created to sell the dark, bitter stout, Hughes, like a lot of people, only learned of the newly uncovered Gilroy canvases as tantalizing examples from the cache (created for markets as diverse as Russia, Israel, France, and the United States) started to surface in 2008.“Within the Guinness archives itself,” Hughes says of the materials kept at the company’s Dublin headquarters, “they’ve got lots of advertising art, watercolors, and sketches of workups towards the final version of the posters. But they never had a single oil painting. Until the paintings started turning up in the United States, where Guinness memorabilia is quite collectible, it wasn’t fully understood that the posters were based on oils. All of the canvases will be in collections within a year,” Hughes adds. For would-be Gilroy collectors, that means the clock is ticking.As it turns out, Gilroy’s entire artistic process was a prelude to the oils. “The first thing he’d usually do was a pencil sketch,” says Hughes. “Then he’d paint a watercolor over the top of the pencil sketch to get the color balance right. Once that was settled and all the approvals were in, he’d sit down and paint the oil. The proof version that went to Guinness for approval, it seems, was always an oil painting.”Based on what we know of John Gilroy’s work as an artist, that makes sense. For almost half a century, Gilroy was regarded not only as one of England’s premier commercial illustrators, but also as one of its best portraitists. “He painted the Queen three times,” says Hughes, “Lord Mountbatten about four times. In 1942, he did a pencil-and-crayon sketch of Churchill in a London bunker.” According to Hughes, Churchill gave that portrait to Russian leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which may mean that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin, there’s a portrait of Winnie by the same guy who made a living drawing cartoons of flying toucans balancing pints of Guinness on their beaks.For those who collect advertising art and breweriana, Gilroy is revered for the numerous campaigns he conceived as an illustrator for S.H. Benson, the venerable British ad agency, which was founded in 1893. Though most famous for the Guinness toucan, which has been the internationally recognized mascot of Guinness since 1935, Gilroy’s first campaign with S.H. Benson was for a yeast extract called Bovril. “Do you have Bovril in the U.S.?” Hughes asks. “It’s a rather dark, pungent, savory spread that goes on toast or bread. It’s full of vitamins, quite a traditional product. He also did a lot of work on campaigns for Colman’s mustard and Macleans toothpaste.”pparently Gilroy’s work caught the eye of Guinness, which wanted something distinctive for its stout. “A black beer is a unique product,” says Hughes. “There weren’t many on the market then, and there are even fewer now. So they wanted their advertising to be well thought of and agreeable to the public.” For example, in the early 1930s, Benson already had an ad featuring a glass of Guinness with a nice foamy head on top. “Gilroy put a smiling face in the foam,” says Hughes. Collectors often refer to this charming drawing as the “anthropomorphic glass.”That made the black beer friendly. To ensure that it would be appealing to the common man, Benson launched its “Guinness for Strength” campaign, whose most famous image is the 1934 Gilroy illustration of a muscular workman effortlessly balancing an enormous steel girder on one arm and his head.Another early campaign put Guinness beer in the world of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” “Guinness and oysters were a big thing,” says Hughes. In one ad, “Gilroy drew all the oysters from the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ sipping glasses of Guinness.”nd then there were the animals, of which the toucan is only the most recognized, and not even the first (that honor goes to a seal). “He had the lion and the ostrich and the bear up the pole,” Hughes says. “There was a whole menagerie of them. The animals kept going for 30 years. It’s probably the longest running campaign in advertising history.”Most of Gilroy’s animals lived in a zoo, so a central character of the animal advertisements was a zookeeper, who was a caricature of the artist himself. “That’s what Gilroy looked like,” says Hughes. “Gilroy was a chubby, little man with a little moustache. As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”Gilroy’s animals good-naturedly tormented their zookeeper by stealing his precious Guinness: An ostrich swallows his glass pint whole, whose bulging outline can be seen in its slender throat; a seal balances a pint on its nose; a kangaroo swaps her “joey” for the zookeeper’s brown bottle. Often the zookeeper is so taken aback by these circumstances his hat has popped off his head.In fact, Gilroy spent a lot of time at the London Zoo to make sure he captured the essence of his animals accurately. “In the archives at Guinness,” says Hughes, “there are a lot of sketches of tortoises, emus, ostriches, and the rest. He perfected the drawing of the animals by going to the zoo, then he adapted them for the adverts.” As a result, a Gilroy bear really looked like a bear, albeit one with a smile on its face.During World War II, Gilroy’s Guinness ads managed to keep their sense of humor (eg: two sailors painting the hull of an aircraft carrier, each wishing the other was a Guinness), and in the 1950s and early ’60s, Gilroy’s famous pint-toting toucans flew all over the world for Guinness, in front of the Kremlin as well as Mt. Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty, although some of these paintings never made it to the campaign stage.Gilroy’s work on the Guinness account ended in 1962, and in 1971, Benson was gobbled up by the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather. By then, says Hughes, Gilroy’s work for Guinness was considered the pinnacle of poster design in the U.K., and quite collectible. “The posters were made by a lithographic process. In the 1930s, the canvases were re-created on stone by a print maker, but eventually the paintings were transferred via photolithography onto metal sheets. Some of the biggest posters were made for billboards. Those used 64 different sheets that you’d give to the guy with the bucket of wheat paste and a mop to put up in the right order to create the completed picture.”In terms of single-sheet posters, Hughes says the biggest ones were probably 4 by 3 feet. Benson’s had an archive of it all, but “when Benson’s shut down in ’71, when they were taken over, they cleaned out their stockroom of hundreds of posters and gave them to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, both have collections of the original posters, including the 64-sheets piled into these packets, which were wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. They’re extremely difficult to handle; you can’t display them, really.”At least the paper got a good home. As for the canvases? Well, their history can only be pieced together based on conjecture, but here’s what Hughes thinks he knows.Sometime in the 1970s, a single collector whose name remains a mystery appears to have purchased as many as 700 to 900 Gilroy paintings that had been in the archives. “The guy who bought the whole archive was an American millionaire,” Hughes says. “He’s a secretive character who doesn’t want to be identified. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want any publicity about how he bought the collection or its subsequent sale.”air enough. What we do know for sure is that the years were not kind to Gilroy’s canvases while in storage at Benson’s. In fact, it’s believed that more than half of the cache did not survive the decades and were probably destroyed by the mystery collector who bought them because of their extremely deteriorated condition (torn canvases, images blackened by mildew, etc.). After all, when Gilroy’s canvases were put away, no one at Benson’s thought they’d be regarded in the future as masterpieces.“A lot of the rolled-up canvases were stuck together,” says Hughes. “Oil takes a long while to dry. Gilroy diluted his oils with what’s called Japan drier, which is a sort of oil thinner that allows you to put the oil on the canvas in a much thinner texture, and then roll them up afterwards. The painted canvas becomes reasonably flexible. The problem is that even with a drier, they still took a long time to dry. And if someone had packed them tightly together and put weight on them, which is what must have happened while the Gilroy paintings were in storage at Benson’s, they’d just stick together. Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”For diehard Guinness-advertising fans, though, it’s not all bad news. After all, almost half of the cache was saved, “and it’s beautiful,” says Hughes. “I’ve just come back from Boston to look at a lot of these canvases out there, and they are superb. The guy who’s selling the canvases I saw had about 40 or 50 with him. They’re absolutely fabulous.”Although he has no proof, Hughes believes the person who bought the cache in the 1970s also oversaw its preservation. Importantly to many collectors, all of the Gilroy canvases are in their found condition, stabilized but essentially unchanged. Even areas in the paint that show evidence of rubbing from adjacent canvases remain as they were found. “I think the preservation has been done by the owner,” Hughes says. “I don’t think the dealers did it. It’s my understanding that they were supplied with fully stabilized canvases from the original buyer. It appears that they were shipped from the U.K., so that’s interesting in itself.” Which suggests they never left the United Kingdom after being purchased by the mysterious American millionaire.collectors of the approval process at Benson. Gilroy painted his canvases on stretchers, and in the bottom corner of each canvas was a small tag identifying the artist, account code, and action to be taken (“Re-draw,” “Revise,” “Hold,” “Print,” and, during World War II, “Submit to censor”). “They would’ve been shown to Guinness on a wooden stretcher,” Hughes says. “Before they went into storage, somebody removed the stretchers and either laid them flat or rolled them up.”Without exception, the canvases Hughes has seen, which were photographed exclusively for his book, are in fine shape and retain their mounting holes for the stretchers and Benson agency tags. “The colors are good,” he says. “They haven’t been in sunlight. They’ll keep for years and years and years.” One collector notes that you can even see the ruby highlights in Gilroy’s paintings of glasses of the stout. “When a pint of Guinness is backlit by a very strong light, the liquid has a deep ruby color,” this collector says. “Gilroy was very careful to include this effect when he painted beer in clear pint glasses.”Finally, for Guinness, breweriana, and advertising-art collectors, the Gilroy canvases also offer a peek of what might have been. “I would say about half the images were never commercially used, so they are absolutely brand new, never been seen before,” says Hughes. “They’re going to blow people away.” Of particular interest to collectors in the United States are the Gilroy paintings of classic cars that were created for an aborted, early 1950s campaign to coincide with the brewing of Guinness on Long Island.Still, it’s the medium that continues to amaze Hughes. “The idea of the canvases, none of us expected that,” he says. “As a Guinness collector, I’ve always collected their adverts, but they’re prints. They never touched Gilroy, he was never anywhere near the printing process. I had acquired a pencil drawing, which I was delighted with. Then these oils started turning up,” he Naturally, Hughes the Guinness scholar has seen a few oils that Hughes the Guinness collector would very much like to own. “If I had a magic wand? Well, I saw one this weekend that I really liked. It’s one of the animal ones. But it’s an animal that was not used commercially. It’s of a rhinoceros sitting on the ground with the zookeeper’s Guinness between his legs. The rhinoceros is looking at the zookeeper, and the zookeeper’s looking around the corner holding his broom. It’s just a great image, and it’s probably the only one of that advert that exists. So if I could wave my magic wand, I think that’s what I’d get. But I’d need $10,000With those kinds of prices and that kind of buzz, you might think that whoever is handling the Guinness advertising account today might be tempted to just re-run the campaign. But Hughes is realistic about the likelihood of that. “Advertising moves on,” he says. “Gilroy’s jokey, humorous, cartoon-like poster design is quintessentially 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. It is a bit quaint, maybe even a little juvenile for today’s audiences. But it’s still amusing. The other day I showed the draft of my book to my mother, who’s 84. She sat in the kitchen, just giggling at the pictures.”That sums up Gilroy to Hughes; not that it’s only appealing to people in their 80s, but that his work is ultimately about making people happy, which is why his advertising images connected so honestly with viewers. “Gilroy had a tremendous sense of humor,” Hughes says. “He always saw the funny side of things. He was apparently a chap who, if you were feeling a little down and out, you’d spend a couple of hours with him and he’d just lift your spirits.” You know, in much the same way as a lot of us feel after a nice pint of Guinness.
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68cm x 46cmThe biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.
“Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”
Cliché or not, that’s roughly what happened in 2008 when hundreds of artist John Gilroy’s oil-on-canvas paintings started to appear on the market. The canvases had been painted by Gilroy as final proofs for his iconic Guinness beer posters, the most recognized alcoholic-beverage advertisements of the mid-20th century. Before most collectors of advertising art and breweriana knew what had happened, most of the best pieces had been snapped up by a handful of savvy collectors. In fact, the distribution of the canvases into the hands of private collectors was so swift and stealthy that one prominent member of the Guinness family was forced to get their favorite Gilroys on the secondary market.One of those early collectors, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls seeing several canvases for the first time at an antiques show. At first, he thought they were posters since that’s what Guinness collectors have come to expect. But after looking at them more closely, and realizing they were all original paintings, he purchased the lot on the spot. “It was quite exciting to stumble upon what appeared to be the unknown original advertising studies for one of the world’s great brands,” he says. But the casualness of that first encounter would not last, as competition for the newly found canvases ramped up among collectors. Today, the collector describes the scramble for these heretofore-unknown pieces as “a Gilroy art scrum.”Among those who were particularly interested in the news of the Gilroy cache was David Hughes, who was a brewer at Guinness for 15 years and has written three books on Guinness advertising art and collectibles, the most recent being “Gilroy Was Good for Guinness,” which reproduces more than 150 of the recently “discovered” paintings. Despite being an expert on the cheery ephemera that was created to sell the dark, bitter stout, Hughes, like a lot of people, only learned of the newly uncovered Gilroy canvases as tantalizing examples from the cache (created for markets as diverse as Russia, Israel, France, and the United States) started to surface in 2008.“Within the Guinness archives itself,” Hughes says of the materials kept at the company’s Dublin headquarters, “they’ve got lots of advertising art, watercolors, and sketches of workups towards the final version of the posters. But they never had a single oil painting. Until the paintings started turning up in the United States, where Guinness memorabilia is quite collectible, it wasn’t fully understood that the posters were based on oils. All of the canvases will be in collections within a year,” Hughes adds. For would-be Gilroy collectors, that means the clock is ticking.As it turns out, Gilroy’s entire artistic process was a prelude to the oils. “The first thing he’d usually do was a pencil sketch,” says Hughes. “Then he’d paint a watercolor over the top of the pencil sketch to get the color balance right. Once that was settled and all the approvals were in, he’d sit down and paint the oil. The proof version that went to Guinness for approval, it seems, was always an oil painting.”Based on what we know of John Gilroy’s work as an artist, that makes sense. For almost half a century, Gilroy was regarded not only as one of England’s premier commercial illustrators, but also as one of its best portraitists. “He painted the Queen three times,” says Hughes, “Lord Mountbatten about four times. In 1942, he did a pencil-and-crayon sketch of Churchill in a London bunker.” According to Hughes, Churchill gave that portrait to Russian leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which may mean that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin, there’s a portrait of Winnie by the same guy who made a living drawing cartoons of flying toucans balancing pints of Guinness on their beaks.For those who collect advertising art and breweriana, Gilroy is revered for the numerous campaigns he conceived as an illustrator for S.H. Benson, the venerable British ad agency, which was founded in 1893. Though most famous for the Guinness toucan, which has been the internationally recognized mascot of Guinness since 1935, Gilroy’s first campaign with S.H. Benson was for a yeast extract called Bovril. “Do you have Bovril in the U.S.?” Hughes asks. “It’s a rather dark, pungent, savory spread that goes on toast or bread. It’s full of vitamins, quite a traditional product. He also did a lot of work on campaigns for Colman’s mustard and Macleans toothpaste.”pparently Gilroy’s work caught the eye of Guinness, which wanted something distinctive for its stout. “A black beer is a unique product,” says Hughes. “There weren’t many on the market then, and there are even fewer now. So they wanted their advertising to be well thought of and agreeable to the public.” For example, in the early 1930s, Benson already had an ad featuring a glass of Guinness with a nice foamy head on top. “Gilroy put a smiling face in the foam,” says Hughes. Collectors often refer to this charming drawing as the “anthropomorphic glass.”That made the black beer friendly. To ensure that it would be appealing to the common man, Benson launched its “Guinness for Strength” campaign, whose most famous image is the 1934 Gilroy illustration of a muscular workman effortlessly balancing an enormous steel girder on one arm and his head.Another early campaign put Guinness beer in the world of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” “Guinness and oysters were a big thing,” says Hughes. In one ad, “Gilroy drew all the oysters from the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ sipping glasses of Guinness.”nd then there were the animals, of which the toucan is only the most recognized, and not even the first (that honor goes to a seal). “He had the lion and the ostrich and the bear up the pole,” Hughes says. “There was a whole menagerie of them. The animals kept going for 30 years. It’s probably the longest running campaign in advertising history.”Most of Gilroy’s animals lived in a zoo, so a central character of the animal advertisements was a zookeeper, who was a caricature of the artist himself. “That’s what Gilroy looked like,” says Hughes. “Gilroy was a chubby, little man with a little moustache. As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”Gilroy’s animals good-naturedly tormented their zookeeper by stealing his precious Guinness: An ostrich swallows his glass pint whole, whose bulging outline can be seen in its slender throat; a seal balances a pint on its nose; a kangaroo swaps her “joey” for the zookeeper’s brown bottle. Often the zookeeper is so taken aback by these circumstances his hat has popped off his head.In fact, Gilroy spent a lot of time at the London Zoo to make sure he captured the essence of his animals accurately. “In the archives at Guinness,” says Hughes, “there are a lot of sketches of tortoises, emus, ostriches, and the rest. He perfected the drawing of the animals by going to the zoo, then he adapted them for the adverts.” As a result, a Gilroy bear really looked like a bear, albeit one with a smile on its face.During World War II, Gilroy’s Guinness ads managed to keep their sense of humor (eg: two sailors painting the hull of an aircraft carrier, each wishing the other was a Guinness), and in the 1950s and early ’60s, Gilroy’s famous pint-toting toucans flew all over the world for Guinness, in front of the Kremlin as well as Mt. Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty, although some of these paintings never made it to the campaign stage.Gilroy’s work on the Guinness account ended in 1962, and in 1971, Benson was gobbled up by the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather. By then, says Hughes, Gilroy’s work for Guinness was considered the pinnacle of poster design in the U.K., and quite collectible. “The posters were made by a lithographic process. In the 1930s, the canvases were re-created on stone by a print maker, but eventually the paintings were transferred via photolithography onto metal sheets. Some of the biggest posters were made for billboards. Those used 64 different sheets that you’d give to the guy with the bucket of wheat paste and a mop to put up in the right order to create the completed picture.”In terms of single-sheet posters, Hughes says the biggest ones were probably 4 by 3 feet. Benson’s had an archive of it all, but “when Benson’s shut down in ’71, when they were taken over, they cleaned out their stockroom of hundreds of posters and gave them to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, both have collections of the original posters, including the 64-sheets piled into these packets, which were wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. They’re extremely difficult to handle; you can’t display them, really.”At least the paper got a good home. As for the canvases? Well, their history can only be pieced together based on conjecture, but here’s what Hughes thinks he knows.Sometime in the 1970s, a single collector whose name remains a mystery appears to have purchased as many as 700 to 900 Gilroy paintings that had been in the archives. “The guy who bought the whole archive was an American millionaire,” Hughes says. “He’s a secretive character who doesn’t want to be identified. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want any publicity about how he bought the collection or its subsequent sale.”air enough. What we do know for sure is that the years were not kind to Gilroy’s canvases while in storage at Benson’s. In fact, it’s believed that more than half of the cache did not survive the decades and were probably destroyed by the mystery collector who bought them because of their extremely deteriorated condition (torn canvases, images blackened by mildew, etc.). After all, when Gilroy’s canvases were put away, no one at Benson’s thought they’d be regarded in the future as masterpieces.“A lot of the rolled-up canvases were stuck together,” says Hughes. “Oil takes a long while to dry. Gilroy diluted his oils with what’s called Japan drier, which is a sort of oil thinner that allows you to put the oil on the canvas in a much thinner texture, and then roll them up afterwards. The painted canvas becomes reasonably flexible. The problem is that even with a drier, they still took a long time to dry. And if someone had packed them tightly together and put weight on them, which is what must have happened while the Gilroy paintings were in storage at Benson’s, they’d just stick together. Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”For diehard Guinness-advertising fans, though, it’s not all bad news. After all, almost half of the cache was saved, “and it’s beautiful,” says Hughes. “I’ve just come back from Boston to look at a lot of these canvases out there, and they are superb. The guy who’s selling the canvases I saw had about 40 or 50 with him. They’re absolutely fabulous.”Although he has no proof, Hughes believes the person who bought the cache in the 1970s also oversaw its preservation. Importantly to many collectors, all of the Gilroy canvases are in their found condition, stabilized but essentially unchanged. Even areas in the paint that show evidence of rubbing from adjacent canvases remain as they were found. “I think the preservation has been done by the owner,” Hughes says. “I don’t think the dealers did it. It’s my understanding that they were supplied with fully stabilized canvases from the original buyer. It appears that they were shipped from the U.K., so that’s interesting in itself.” Which suggests they never left the United Kingdom after being purchased by the mysterious American millionaire.collectors of the approval process at Benson. Gilroy painted his canvases on stretchers, and in the bottom corner of each canvas was a small tag identifying the artist, account code, and action to be taken (“Re-draw,” “Revise,” “Hold,” “Print,” and, during World War II, “Submit to censor”). “They would’ve been shown to Guinness on a wooden stretcher,” Hughes says. “Before they went into storage, somebody removed the stretchers and either laid them flat or rolled them up.”“As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”
Without exception, the canvases Hughes has seen, which were photographed exclusively for his book, are in fine shape and retain their mounting holes for the stretchers and Benson agency tags. “The colors are good,” he says. “They haven’t been in sunlight. They’ll keep for years and years and years.” One collector notes that you can even see the ruby highlights in Gilroy’s paintings of glasses of the stout. “When a pint of Guinness is backlit by a very strong light, the liquid has a deep ruby color,” this collector says. “Gilroy was very careful to include this effect when he painted beer in clear pint glasses.”Finally, for Guinness, breweriana, and advertising-art collectors, the Gilroy canvases also offer a peek of what might have been. “I would say about half the images were never commercially used, so they are absolutely brand new, never been seen before,” says Hughes. “They’re going to blow people away.” Of particular interest to collectors in the United States are the Gilroy paintings of classic cars that were created for an aborted, early 1950s campaign to coincide with the brewing of Guinness on Long Island.Still, it’s the medium that continues to amaze Hughes. “The idea of the canvases, none of us expected that,” he says. “As a Guinness collector, I’ve always collected their adverts, but they’re prints. They never touched Gilroy, he was never anywhere near the printing process. I had acquired a pencil drawing, which I was delighted with. Then these oils started turning up,” he Naturally, Hughes the Guinness scholar has seen a few oils that Hughes the Guinness collector would very much like to own. “If I had a magic wand? Well, I saw one this weekend that I really liked. It’s one of the animal ones. But it’s an animal that was not used commercially. It’s of a rhinoceros sitting on the ground with the zookeeper’s Guinness between his legs. The rhinoceros is looking at the zookeeper, and the zookeeper’s looking around the corner holding his broom. It’s just a great image, and it’s probably the only one of that advert that exists. So if I could wave my magic wand, I think that’s what I’d get. But I’d need $10,000With those kinds of prices and that kind of buzz, you might think that whoever is handling the Guinness advertising account today might be tempted to just re-run the campaign. But Hughes is realistic about the likelihood of that. “Advertising moves on,” he says. “Gilroy’s jokey, humorous, cartoon-like poster design is quintessentially 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. It is a bit quaint, maybe even a little juvenile for today’s audiences. But it’s still amusing. The other day I showed the draft of my book to my mother, who’s 84. She sat in the kitchen, just giggling at the pictures.”That sums up Gilroy to Hughes; not that it’s only appealing to people in their 80s, but that his work is ultimately about making people happy, which is why his advertising images connected so honestly with viewers. “Gilroy had a tremendous sense of humor,” Hughes says. “He always saw the funny side of things. He was apparently a chap who, if you were feeling a little down and out, you’d spend a couple of hours with him and he’d just lift your spirits.” You know, in much the same way as a lot of us feel after a nice pint of Guinness. -
58cm x 42cm Quaint vintage poster of a jaunting car carrying a group around Phoenix Park- the giant Wellington monument can be seen in the background. The Wellington Monument or sometimes the Wellington Testimonial,is an obelisk located in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland. The testimonial is situated at the southeast end of the Park, overlooking Kilmainham and the River Liffey. The structure is 62 metres (203 ft) tall, making it the largest obelisk in Europe
History
The Wellington Testimonial was built to commemorate the victories of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Wellington, the British politician and general, also known as the 'Iron Duke', was born in Ireland. Originally planned to be located in Merrion Square, it was built in the Phoenix Park after opposition from the square's residents. The obelisk was designed by the architect Sir Robert Smirke and the foundation stone was laid in 1817. In 1820, the project ran out of construction funds and the structure remained unfinished until 18 June 1861 when it was opened to the public. There were also plans for a statue of Wellington on horseback, but a shortage of funds ruled that out.Features
There are four bronze plaques cast from cannons captured at Waterloo – three of which have pictorial representations of his career while the fourth has an inscription. The plaques depict 'Civil and Religious Liberty' by John Hogan, 'Waterloo' by Thomas Farrell and the 'Indian Wars' by Joseph Robinson Kirk. The inscription reads:- Asia and Europe, saved by thee, proclaim
- Invincible in war thy deathless name,
- Now round thy brow the civic oak we twine
- That every earthly glory may be thine.
Cultural references
The monument is referenced throughout James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The first page of the novel alludes to a giant whose head is at "Howth Castle and Environs" and whose toes are at "a knock out in the park (p. 3)"; John Bishop extends the analogy, interpreting this centrally located obelisk as the prone giant's male member. A few pages later, the monument is the site of the fictional "Willingdone Museyroom" (p. 8). -
57cm x 48cm The Dewar's whisky brand was created by John Dewar, Sr. in 1846.Under the control of his two sons, John A. Dewar Jr. and Thomas "Tommy" Dewar, the brand expanded to become a global market leader by 1896 and began to win several awards, including a gold medal in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Tommy became famous as the author of a travel journal, Ramble Round the Globe, which documented his travels while publicizing the Dewar name. Dewar's eventually expanded their product by constructing the Aberfeldy Distillery in 1896.John Dewar & Sons 1926 client correspondence with watermark on document
Notable processes
Dewar's pioneered the process of "marrying" the whisky in oak casks to allow the blend to age as one within the casks. After the blend is created, the whisky is returned to an oak cask and aged even further to obtain a smooth, robust finish. -
45cm x 45cm The "Manchester Martyrs" is a term used by Irish nationalists to refer to three men—William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien—who were executed following their conviction of murder in 1867 after an attack on a police van in Manchester, England, in which a police officer was accidentally shot dead, an incident that was known at the time as the "Manchester Outrages". The three were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among a group of 30–40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol. Police Sergeant Charles Brett, travelling inside with the keys, was shot and killed while looking through the keyhole of the van as the attackers attempted to force the door open by shooting the lock. Kelly and Deasy were released after another prisoner in the van took the keys from Brett's body and passed them to the group outside through a ventilation grill; the pair were never recaptured, despite an extensive search. Although Allen and Larkin admitted taking part in the attack, none of the defendants was accused of firing the fatal shot, but they were convicted on the basis of "joint enterprise" for taking part in a criminal enterprise that ended in the killing. The trial has nonetheless been described by an eminent Irish historian as "unsatisfactory", and the evidence as "dubious".Two others were also charged and found guilty of Brett's murder, Thomas Maguire and Edward O'Meagher Condon, but their death sentences were overturned—O'Meagher Condon's through the intercession of the United States government (he was an American citizen), and Maguire's because the evidence given against him was considered unsatisfactory by the court. Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were publicly hanged on a temporary structure built on the wall of Salford Gaol, on 23 November 1867, in front of a crowd of 8,000–10,000. Ireland reacted with revulsion and anger to the executions,and Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were hailed as political martyrs. Annual commemorations were held throughout Ireland, and monuments were built in many Irish towns.Brett, the first Manchester City Policeofficer to be killed on duty, is memorialised in a monument in St Ann's Church.
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63cm x 52cm The greatest band in the world came from Liverpool, a city with an Irish population so large that it’s known as “The Real Capital of Ireland”, but although The Beatles’ success is familiar to all, their Irish roots are not so well-known. “We’re all Irish” John Lennon declared when the band toured Ireland in 1963. The singer was born in war-time Liverpool on October 9, 1940 to Julia and Alfred Lennon. His father, a merchant seaman of Irish descent, was away at the time of John’s birth and for much of his life.John knew little about his connection to Ireland whilst growing up, but it was in the post-Beatles days that he became one of the most famous voices calling for a United Ireland and for an end to English presence in Northern Ireland.Known for their political activism, John and Yoko penned two protest songs “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “The Luck of the Irish” inspired by the events in Northern Ireland for their 1972 album Some Time in New York City Such was the connection Lennon felt to his homeland that he had hoped to make a piece of it a place for him and Yoko Ono to retire. He purchased an island off the West Coast of Ireland, which he owned until his untimely death in 1980.
“I'm a quarter Irish or half Irish or something, and long, long before the trouble started, I told Yoko that's where we're going to retire, and I took her to Ireland. We went around Ireland a bit and we stayed in Ireland and we had a sort of second honeymoon there. So, I was completely involved in Ireland” – John Lennon, 1971.
James Paul McCartney was born on June 18, 1942 in Liverpool to Jim and Mary Patricia (Mahon) McCartney, and like many other Liverpool families descended from Irish immigrants. His mother’s father was born in Ireland, and was Roman Catholic, while his great-grandfather was an Irish native, and Protestant.It is unknown which part of Ireland Paul McCartney’s paternal side is from, but it is known that they first emigrated from Ireland to Galloway, Scotland, and then on to Liverpool. McCartney, who immortalised the Mull of Kintyre with his song of the same name also wrote about his Irish heritage in his music. Like John and Yoko, Paul and his first wife Linda wrote in response to the events of Bloody Sunday, drawing from his Irish background in their controversial song “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”. The song was completely banned in Britain but reached number one on the singles chart in Ireland.Then there’s Ringo, and while Ringo Starr is often described as the most English Beatle, Mark Lewisohn in his book Tune In describes one family line going back to County Mayo suggesting that all four of The Beatles can be accurately described as having ancestral roots in Ireland.It was however George Harrison who had the strongest Irish connections, coming from an Irish Catholic family on his mother’s side. Unusually for the time his grandparents never married and Mark Lewisohn suggests that the secretive aspect to his family life and their suspicion of “nosy neighbours” had a lasting effect on the attitude of ‘the quiet Beatle’. Harrison would return to Ireland throughout his life to visit family living in North Dublin, often catching the ferry across from Liverpool to Dublin. He also took his soon-to-be-wife Pattie Boyd on an early vacation to Ireland. Harrison’s music however didn't overtly draw from his Irish heritage, but the films produced through his own company are peppered with references to Ireland.The “Scouse” accent of Liverpool itself betrays Irish influence, the port city became a melting pot of several languages and dialects, as sailors, traders and migrants from other parts of Britain, Ireland and northern Europe established themselves in the area throughout the 19th century. The Irish have played a major role in Liverpool's population and social fabric for a good part of its 800 year history and it is apparent today when visiting the city. It’s safe to say that the people of Liverpool are extremely proud of its four sons and the way that Irish influence has helped to shape this famous musical city. -
43cm x 38cm Dublin The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was fighting the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798 and the first armed conflict of the Irish revolutionary period. Sixteen of the Rising's leaders were executed from May 1916. The nature of the executions, and subsequent political developments, ultimately contributed to an increase in popular support for Irish independence. Organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 and lasted for six days.Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 women of Cumann na mBan, seized strategically important buildings in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic. The British Army brought in thousands of reinforcements as well as artillery and a gunboat. There was street fighting on the routes into the city centre, where the rebels slowed the British advance and inflicted many casualties. Elsewhere in Dublin, the fighting mainly consisted of sniping and long-range gun battles. The main rebel positions were gradually surrounded and bombarded with artillery. There were isolated actions in other parts of Ireland; Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill had issued a countermand in a bid to halt the Rising, which greatly reduced the number of rebels who mobilised. With much greater numbers and heavier weapons, the British Army suppressed the Rising. Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29 April, although sporadic fighting continued briefly. After the surrender, the country remained under martial law. About 3,500 people were taken prisoner by the British and 1,800 of them were sent to internment camps or prisons in Britain. Most of the leaders of the Rising were executed following courts-martial. The Rising brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics, which for nearly fifty years had been dominated by constitutional nationalism. Opposition to the British reaction to the Rising contributed to changes in public opinion and the move toward independence, as shown in the December 1918 election in Ireland which was won by the Sinn Féin party, which convened the First Dáil and declared independence. Of the 485 people killed, 260 were civilians, 143 were British military and police personnel, and 82 were Irish rebels, including 16 rebels executed for their roles in the Rising. More than 2,600 people were wounded. Many of the civilians were killed or wounded by British artillery fire or were mistaken for rebels. Others were caught in the crossfire during firefights between the British and the rebels. The shelling and resulting fires left parts of central Dublin in ruins.
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48cm x 38cm
Black & White is a blended Scotch whisky produced by Diageo in Scotland. It was originally produced by the London-based James Buchanan & Co Ltd, which was founded by James Buchanan. When was first made in 1879 was Initially known as Buchanan's Blend and then House of Commons (after the British House of Commons), its nickname, referring to the black and white labelling, was eventually adopted as the official brand instead.[1] The brand's motif (featuring a black Scottish Terrier and a white West Highland White Terrier) was conceived by James Buchanan during the 1890s.[2] In 1968, the Black & White brand featured in an important trademark infringement case, Maier Brewing Co. v. Fleischmann Distilling Corp., 390 F.2d 117 (9th Cir. 1968), when a brewing company started manufacturing beer under the brand name "Black and White". After a series of mergers and acquisitions involving Dewar's (1915), Distillers Company, and Guinness (forming United Distillers), the brand is now owned by Diageo. It claims to be the most successful in France, Venezuela, and Brazil.At present, the brand is sold only outside the United Kingdom.Black & White Type Scotch whisky Manufacturer Diageo Country of origin Scotland Introduced 1879 Alcohol by volume 40% In popular culture
- In Cheers season 6 episode 5 "The Crane Mutiny", Frasier orders a scotch, and Woody pours him a Black & White on the rocks.
- In his 1928 sonnet Huppy: The Life o' Riley, American war poet John Allan Wyeth describes an incident that took place in the French village of the same name, where Wyeth was serving with the 33rd U.S. Division during World War I. It was sometime between June 1 and 8, 1918. While on a nighttime carouse with his fellow Doughboys, Lt. Wyeth and his buddies found a village café and marched inside over the protests of the proprietress, who insisted that her place of business was closed. One of the soldiers replied, "Allez toot sweet," (Allez tout de suite means, "Go right away"), "to hell!" One of the soldiers ordered Black and White Scotch whisky. As the proprietress obliged, another Doughboy launched into a rendition of the new song, "You're in the Army Now".
- A bottle is seen on a table in a bar somewhere in the Congo in Tarzan Escapes (1936).
- Dick Diver, the main character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1934 novel, Tender is the Night, orders "The Blackenwite with siphon", symbolising clarity, but the French barman only has "Johnny Walkair", symbolising business as usual. He is later reported to smell of whiskey rather than whisky.
- James Bond drinks Black & White in the Ian Fleming novel Moonraker.
- James Bond shares a bottle with Felix Leiter and Quarrel in Pussfella's Bar in the 1962 film Dr. No.
- In the novel, Scruffy by Paul Gallico, a case of Black & White Scotch is the price the British must pay a Spaniard for his female Barbary ape as OIC Apes Maj. Tim Bailey and the MI-5 boffins strive to ensure Churchill’s (true) order that the ape packs be kept up to strength.
- Tom Rath drinks Black & White in the Sloan Wilson novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
- Black & White is the whisky Cary Grant was fond of in the 1964 movie Father Goose.
- Marcello Mastroianni drank Black & White with his father, his lady friend, and Paparazzo (played by Walter Santesso) (Paparazzo actually placed the order for the bottle of Black & White) in the Fellini classic film La Dolce Vita.
- In Some Girls Do (1969), the British spy film, Bulldog Drummond (played by Richard Johnson) orders Black & White with water several times.
- Physicist Richard Feynman drank Black & White, as described in his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!.
- Herbert Kilpin, co-founder and first captain of football club AC Milan, claimed that "the only way to forget a conceded goal was to drink a sip of the hard stuff"; he reportedly kept a bottle of Black & White whisky in a hole behind the goal for such an occasion.
- Black & White whisky was featured in the film Dolores Claiborne.
- The drink is featured in the novel Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, in which the narrator orders a Black & White and water.
- One of the biggest hits of the Polish band Kombi is dedicated to and titled "Black & White".
- In the early opening credits of the Alfred Zeisler movie The Amazing Adventure (1936), and Louis King's Bulldog Drummond in Africa(1938), a neon sign can be briefly seen advertising Black & White whisky in the evening London cityscape.
- In the Czech movie Kamarád do deště II – Příběh z Brooklynu a bottle of this whisky was present in the hotel room and later Marek Vašut took it home.
- Frasier Crane's friend Dr. Lawrence Crandell orders a Black & White neat in season 7 episode 22 of Cheers. However, due to continuity error (most likely), it was served over rocks.
- When the antagonist in Paul Auster's 1986 novella, Ghosts (which was published as the second part of Auster's The New York Trilogy), orders a Black and White on the rocks, he is effectively revealing his identity to the novella's protagonist.
- Walt Disney reportedly ended his work days with one of his favorite cocktails, a Scotch Mist: Black & White poured over crushed ice with a lemon twist
- Along with Haig, Black & White was a favorite Scotch whisky of Dean Martin.
- Black & White was the favorite Whisky of Ludwig Erhard, the second chancellor of the German Federal Republic.
- In the 1972 French movie The Pebbles of Étretat, actor Maurice Ronet can be seen pouring a bottle of Black & White into a glass at 33:55.
- In the 1969 movie Monte Carlo or Bust!, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore have their Black and White Scotch confiscated at approximately 1:01:00 into the movie.
- In the 1977 French movie The Apprentice Heel, a bottle of Black and White Scotch can be seen being poured at 58:35.
- In the 1969 French movie The Appointment, a Black and White Scotch logo can be seen above the bar at 1:52.
- Black and White whisky figures prominently in the 1984 Malayalam (Indian) movie "Bharya Oru Devatha"
- In the 1969 BBC Monaco Grand Prix documentary entitled "Wheelbase", an advertisement for Black and White can be seen at the exit of the tunnel at 21:27
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48cm x 38cm Dublin The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was fighting the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798 and the first armed conflict of the Irish revolutionary period. Sixteen of the Rising's leaders were executed from May 1916. The nature of the executions, and subsequent political developments, ultimately contributed to an increase in popular support for Irish independence. Organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 and lasted for six days.Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 women of Cumann na mBan, seized strategically important buildings in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic. The British Army brought in thousands of reinforcements as well as artillery and a gunboat. There was street fighting on the routes into the city centre, where the rebels slowed the British advance and inflicted many casualties. Elsewhere in Dublin, the fighting mainly consisted of sniping and long-range gun battles. The main rebel positions were gradually surrounded and bombarded with artillery. There were isolated actions in other parts of Ireland; Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill had issued a countermand in a bid to halt the Rising, which greatly reduced the number of rebels who mobilised. With much greater numbers and heavier weapons, the British Army suppressed the Rising. Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29 April, although sporadic fighting continued briefly. After the surrender, the country remained under martial law. About 3,500 people were taken prisoner by the British and 1,800 of them were sent to internment camps or prisons in Britain. Most of the leaders of the Rising were executed following courts-martial. The Rising brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics, which for nearly fifty years had been dominated by constitutional nationalism. Opposition to the British reaction to the Rising contributed to changes in public opinion and the move toward independence, as shown in the December 1918 election in Ireland which was won by the Sinn Féin party, which convened the First Dáil and declared independence. Of the 485 people killed, 260 were civilians, 143 were British military and police personnel, and 82 were Irish rebels, including 16 rebels executed for their roles in the Rising. More than 2,600 people were wounded. Many of the civilians were killed or wounded by British artillery fire or were mistaken for rebels. Others were caught in the crossfire during firefights between the British and the rebels. The shelling and resulting fires left parts of central Dublin in ruins.
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W & A Gilbey was founded in 1857 and began in small basement cellars at the corner of Oxford Street and Berwick Street in London. Gilbeys benefitted greatly from the introduction of the off-licence system introduced in 1860 and a commercial agreement between Britain and France in 1861, following which, the British Prime Minister Gladstone reduced duty on French wines from 12 shillings to 2 shillings. Gilbeys were successful from the start and, within a couple of years, had branches in Dublin, Belfast and Edinburgh.
1861 Wine importers and distillers
By 1861 Gilbeys had premises at 31 Upper Sackville Street in Dublin (now called O’Connell Street), and were described as wine importers and distillers. They carried stocks of over 140 different wines and held between 700 and 1,000 wine casks under bond.1866 A distinctive brand
In 1866, the company moved to new offices and stores at 46 & 47 Upper Sackville Street in the centre of Dublin (now O’Connell Street), which contained their own vaults. The buildings were previously the premises of Sneyd, French and Barton. The premises had its own tasting room and a small still for determining the alcoholic strength of wines and spirits. Gilbeys had their own patented bottle cases which could be easily stacked, a state of the art bottle washing machine and by this time, wax seals were replaced with their patented capsule seal. Gilbeys sold all their wines and spirits directly to consumers under their own distinctive brand.1874 300,000 Gallons in bond
Initially famous for their wines, spirits were becoming a greater part of Gilbey’s business. By 1874, Gilbeys held a stock in bond of over 300,000 gallons of whiskey sourced from “the most celebrated Dublin Distilleries”. The proprietary brand at this time was Gilbey’s Castle Whiskey. They sold three main brands Castle U P Irish Whiskey 33% under proof (u.p.), Castle U V Irish Whiskey 17% u.p. and Castle D O Irish Whiskey at full proof strength.1875 996,000 Bottles a year
At this point Gilbey’s held the largest stocks of Irish whiskey, outside of the distilleries themselves, of any company in the world. In 1875 they were selling 83,000 cases of Irish whiskey compared with only 38,000 of Scotch, a reflection of the pre-eminence of Irish Whiskey at the time. -
Old Bushmills Irish Whiskey advert- depicting the Cheshire Hunt .Officially the worlds oldest whiskey distillery- when in 1608 King James I granted Sir Thomas Phillips,landowner and Governor of Co Antrim,Ireland - a licence to distill.It was in 1784 when Mr Hugh Anderson registered the Old Bushmills Distillery and the Pot Still became its registered trademark, which is still a mark of genuine distinction to this day. 50cm x 65cm Belfast The Bushmills area has a long tradition with distillation. According to one story, as far back as 1276, an early settler called Sir Robert Savage of Ards, before defeating the Irish in battle, fortified his troops with "a mighty drop of acqua vitae". In 1608, a licence was granted to Sir Thomas Phillips (Irish adventurer) by King James I to distil whiskey. The Bushmills Old Distillery Company itself was not established until 1784 by Hugh Anderson. Bushmills suffered many lean years with numerous periods of closure with no record of the distillery being in operation in the official records both in 1802 and in 1822. In 1860 a Belfast spirit merchant named Jame McColgan and Patrick Corrigan bought the distillery; in 1880 they formed a limited company. In 1885, the original Bushmills buildings were destroyed by fire but the distillery was swiftly rebuilt. In 1890, a steamship owned and operated by the distillery, SS Bushmills, made its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to deliver Bushmills whiskey to America. It called at Philadelphiaand New York City before heading on to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama.
- Bushmills Original – Irish whiskey blend sometimes called White Bush or Bushmills White Label. The grain whiskey is matured in American oak casks.
- Black Bush – A blend with a significantly greater proportion of malt whiskey than the white label. It features malt whiskey aged in casks previously used for Spanish Oloroso sherry.
- Red Bush – Like the Black Bush, this is a blend with a higher proportion of malt whiskey than the standard bottling, but in contrast the malt whiskey has been matured in ex-bourbon casks.
- Bushmills 10 year single malt – Combines malt whiskeys aged at least 10 years in American bourbon or Oloroso sherry casks.
- Bushmills Distillery Reserve 12 year single malt – exclusively available at the Old Bushmills Distillery, this 12 year aged single malt is matured in oak casks for a rich, complex flavour with notes of sherry, dark chocolate and spices.
- Bushmills 16 year single malt – Malt whiskeys aged at least 16 years in American bourbon barrels or Spanish Oloroso sherry butts are mixed together before finishing in Port pipes for a few months.
- Bushmills 21 year single malt – A limited number of 21 year bottles are made each year. After 19 years, bourbon-barrel-aged and sherry-cask-aged malt whiskeys are combined, which is followed by two years of finishing in Madeira drums.
- Bushmills 1608: Originally released as a special 400th Anniversary whiskey; since 2009 it will be available only in the Whiskey Shop at the distillery and at duty-free shops.
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65cm x 50cm PHOTOGRAPHER TARQUIN BLAKE has a penchant for visiting parts of Ireland people don’t always get to see. He’s written about and photographed Ireland’s abandoned ‘big houses’ and haunted houses, but for his latest book he turns his sights on Irish castles. Like his previous books, Exploring Irish Castles is a coffee table book filled with gorgeous photos and the background stories to some fascinating locations. While his previous book ideas came from his own travels throughout Ireland, this topic was suggested by his publisher – showing how popular Irish castles are to the Irish and those abroad. “I was given an objective – the book had to cover all the main Irish castles and it should cover a variety of ruins, family homes and heritage sites that are open to the public,” explains Blake. “I went off and started investigating all the Irish castles, drawing up a list of the best ones. I started going out visiting them – I visited about 100 castles and 40 of those ended up in the book.” He wanted to cover all the main periods of Irish castles, from the big Anglo Norman castles like Trim Castle to the tower houses and fortified houses, which are the commonest small castle in Ireland. The book also has a selection of the neo gothic castles – the Victorian country houses made to look like castles. Blake did a lot of in-depth research into the castles for the book. “What I found was a lot of the tower houses would have very little history so they weren’t very suitable for including in the book,” he says. There are around 6,000 towers in Ireland, but Blake says that there are very few records related to them around. He gave some insight into the history of castles here: “The concept of using building methods to protect territory was introduced from overseas in the 12th century, when the Irish term caisleán began to appear in manuscripts. By the 16th century, Ireland had become the most castellated country in Europe.” “The tower houses were built up until the early 1600s and it’s generally recognised that Cromwell’s invasion put an end to true castle building,” says Blake. This is because after the invention of artillery, the castle didn’t provide enough protection from invaders. “Before that they were pretty much invincible and everybody was building them and everyone was living in them,” he says. “After Cromwell, they went back to the renaissance houses, and the big country houses in the Georgian period.” The book features very well-known castles, such as Trim Castle and Blarney Castle, but also some lesser-known locations, such as Co Galway’s Fiddaun Castle. It’s all about trying to encourage people to visit the spots, says Blake. One of the most interesting locations was Tullynally Castle in Co Westmeath. Thomas Packenham, the historian, and his family still live there. “It was a fascinating place to visit,” says Blake. “It’s pretty impressive – it is the largest family home in Ireland.”For me the most interesting part was visiting the places and meeting the people. It was great seeing Tullynally, that’s an example there of seeing how people still live in these places. They have massive kitchen and the huge halls, and you can’t really imagine the rooms – big enough to fit 200-300 people.
Castle facts
Kilwaughter Castle, County Antrim- There are quite a number of Patrick Agnews in the family, resulting in a bit of a genealogical headache.
- It was used to billet Americans from the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion in preparation for D-Day.
- It occupies a wild position perched on top of the cliff. In 1639 a section of the kitchen collapsed when the cliff face underneath gave way. The dinner, kitchen tables, and all the silverware fell into the sea below.
- Nine of the kitchen staff fell to their deaths and the kitchen boy only survived by clinging to a corner of the crumbling wall.
- After his father’s death in 1581, David Barry, fifth Viscount Buttevant, set fire to the castle, rendering it unliveable so that Sir Walter Raleigh couldn’t have it.
- In 1751, Richard Barry became the sixth earl when he was six years old. A reckless gambler and drinker, he served briefly in the 9th Regiment of Dragoons before dying of a fever at the age of 28.
- In 1599, four-year-old Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth’s namesake and godchild, inherited the Mallow property. The story goes that the Queen sent her godchild two white deer as a christening gift, and the herd of white deer at Mallow today is descended from this original pair.
- In the eighteenth century, Mallow Castle became fantastically famous for its social goings-on, becoming known as ‘The Bath of Ireland’.
- Sir John Jephson upheld a bizarre ritual of having a white rat on a small chair at his right-hand side during all meals, believing this would keep him free from debt. Apparently, the white rat then often appeared before the head of the Jephson family, predicting their imminent demise.
- The hill upon which it is built is a long extinct volcano.
- ‘Fighting Charlie’ was a mean landlord – he gave just £30 for famine relief but spent £15,000 renovating his home.
- You can see the Isle of Man and Scotland from the tower on a clear day.
- The third Earl of Rosse built the 16-ton telescope called Leviathan, which remained the world’s largest telescope until 1917.
- His wife, Lady Mary, was an accomplished early pioneer of photography and installed a darkroom. It is the oldest surviving example of its kind in the world.
- Their son Charles invented the steam turbine. His company eventually became part of Rolls-Royce and still survives as a division of Siemens.
- Jonathan Charles Darby found three upright skeletons sealed into a wall and bricked them up again because he decided there must have been a good reason to put them there.
- It has a reputation as the most haunted castle in Europe.
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42cm x 31cm
Speaking to the Irish Times in 2007 about the Rolling Stones’s 1982 concert, Slane Castle owner Lord Henry Mount Charles said Ireland had never seen anything like it before.
“The weather was beautiful, the show was magic. Mick Jagger came down the Thursday before the show and had dinner in the castle and the production crew slept in the drawing room of the castle the night before the show. It had an almost gypsy-like quality about it.”
Some 70,000 music fans paid £12 each for a ticket in 1982. Thousands arrived the night before to camp out wherever they could find a pitch around the village. Fans complained of being charged £5 for a six-pack of beer and £1 for a can of Coke, with one newspaper report at the time remarking that “every kind of huckster, three-card-trick man and itinerant salesman had a stall in Slane”.
The day of the concert, July 24th, saw brilliant sunshine, with those who weren’t sprayed by two massive water hoses taking advantage of the lack of security to swim in the River Boyne.
After the warm-up acts, which included the Chieftains, the Rolling Stones bounded on, with Mick Jagger proclaiming: “It’s great to be back in Dublin. After 16 years, it’s very nice of you to come, so let’s spend the night together.” Jagger showed a hazy knowledge of Irish geography and also of the band’s own history. They had last played Ireland in 1965.
Aerial view of the 80,000-strong crowd at the Rolling Stones in Slane, July 1982. Photograph: Tom Lawlor Concert report, Slane, 1982, by Maev Kennedy
They were a pretty audience. They brought their babies and some of them brought their mammies.In the interminable gaps between the live music they shinned over the 10-foot fence to leap into the Boyne and every mother’s son and daughter of them was decently clothed. Some stripped down to pants, some modestly leaped in fully clothed.
A ferocious, savage, vicious, terrifying gang of Hell’s Angels, from the badlands of Waterford, sat in a reeking huddle on the grass, shunned by 20 yards by the rest of the crowd. Hunched menacingly in their colours, they were eating Choc-Ices.
The crowd got younger all the way into the centre. Half way down were the 20-year-olds, sprawled out on rugs with their wine, in plastic bottles as per instructions, and their dope. The worst crime they committed was to fall sound asleep in the hot sun, and some slept right through the Stones.
Only in the first 10 rows, damped down by fire hoses and at one ecstatic moment sprayed with fire hose by Mick Jagger HIMSELF was there that wild dangerous electric excitement the media associates with huge rock concerts. They leaped and shrieked and held up imploring arms.
“You’re all right!” Mick Jagger yelled at them. “You’re not too bad yourself!” they shouted back.
Up at the top of the hill, up at the top of a 60 foot pine tree, a lunatic fan leaped up and down hysterically.
“It’s great to be back in Dublin,” Jagger assured them. Nobody had the heart to correct him.
By the last chords of the opening Under My Thumb a steady stream of denim was pouring up the slopes and out the gate. They’d waited 10 hours to see the Rolling Stones, and they’d seen the Rolling Stones; they knew exactly what they were going to play, so they left, perfectly happy.
People kept comparing the Stones concert to the Pope’s visit, but nobody ever left a Papal gig before the Last Blessing.
Returning after 25 years to Slane Castle, Mick Jagger performs to a crowd of 70,000 on Saturday 18th August, 2007. Photograph: Kate Geraghty Concert report, Slane, August 2007
“Is it a bit much?” Mick Jagger asked while the central section of the massive stage, on which the Rolling Stones stood, levitated away from their backing band and moved through the awestruck crowd.
Excess is a term that has long been associated with the Stones, and their hi-tech, high energy performance seemed to strike the right chord with fans.
Concert goers who had paid some €60 extra for “Gold Circle” tickets, which entitled them to a standing space at front of the stage, most certainly got their money’s worth, as they stood a hair’s breadth away from their idols. Eventually the stage retracted and the show continued as before.
However, for some fans, the moment they stood beside the Rolling Stones will live long in memory.
Mick Jagger remains a remarkably competent frontman, with an impressive swagger, and his banter during the interludes had the crowd hanging on his every word.
He gave fans an obligatory few words “as Gaeilge” and to his credit, and much to the fans’ delight, his diction was spot on.
Another big cheer came when Jagger introduced guitarist Ronnie Wood to the crowd, describing him as a man from Naas, where Wood now has a home. Wood grabbed the microphone from his mate and bellowed “come on the Royals”, to a somewhat mixed reaction.
Dave Fanning: Slane 1982 was ‘a big circus’
Dave Fanning spoke to The Irish Times in 2007: “I remember the first Slane, standing backstage and watching Phil Lynott arrive by helicopter. There wasn’t such a big vibe about hanging around the castle – everyone was either in the crowd or backstage.
“1987 was memorable because I was seeing one of my favourite people fail miserably: David Bowie. That was also the year I got my binoculars nicked.
“The Rolling Stones in 1982 was like a great big circus, and the stage had these two big catwalks that spread right out into the crowd like a pair of wings. When Keith Richards walked down one of the catwalks, he was standing just 50 yards from us, and that was cool.“Bruce was the biggest thing going in 1985, but Slane was the biggest crowd he had played to up till then. Bob Dylan did a solid enough gig in ’84, but he played as if he was in the Baggot.
“Queen was the first Slane where it rained, and there was a bad vibe with the crowd down the front, because there were so many people there.”
Returning after 25 years to Slane Castle, Mick Jagger performs to a crowd of 70,000 on Saturday 18th August, 2007. Photograph: Kate Geraghty BP Fallon: 1982 wasn’t a patch on 2007
BP Fallon spoke to The Irish Times in 2007 about his memories of 1980s Slane: “Dylan was the most memorable one for me – he had a great band which included Mick Taylor (ex-Rolling Stones) and Ian McLagan (ex-Faces).
“The worst Slane was definitely David Bowie – all that Glass Spider rubbish and those dancers. Terrible. I didn’t go to Queen on principle, because they had played in South Africa during the apartheid regime. I saw The Rolling Stones gig, but it wasn’t a patch on the [2007] tour.”
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27cm x 27cm Castlegregory Co Kerry Fine framed print of the legendary Irish Antarctic explorer and hero,Tom Crean mending blankets with his colleague on Shackleton's final Expedition Thomas Crean (c. 16 February 1877 – 27 July 1938) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving. Crean was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott's 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean's 35-statute-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal. Crean left the family farm near Annascaul, in County Kerry, to enlist in the Royal Navy at age 16. In 1901, while serving on Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteered to join Scott's 1901–1904 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica, thus beginning his exploring career. After his experience on the Terra Nova, Crean's third and final Antarctic venture was as second officer on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. After the ship Endurance became beset in the pack ice and sank, Crean and the ship's company spent 492 days drifting on the ice before undertaking a journey in the ship's lifeboats to Elephant Island. He was a member of the crew which made a small-boat journey of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km) from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to seek aid for the stranded party. After retiring from the navy on health grounds in 1920, Crean ran his pub the South Pole Inn in County Kerry with his wife and daughters. He died in 1938. Crean was born around 16 February 1877 in the farming area of Gurtuchrane near the village of Annascaul on Corca Dhuibhne in County Kerry, Ireland, to Patrick and Catherine (née Courtney) Crean. One of 11 siblings with 7 brothers and 3 sisters. He attended the local Catholic school (at nearby Brackluin), leaving at the age of 12 to help on the family farm. Many sources, including Smith, give Crean's date of birth as 20 July 1877,but more recent scholarship demonstrates this is unlikely given parish records. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the Royal Navy at the naval station in nearby Minard Inlet, possibly after an argument with his father.His enlistment as a boy second class is recorded in Royal Navy records on 10 July 1893. Crean's initial naval apprenticeship was aboard the training ship Impregnable at Devonport. In November 1894, he was transferred to Devastation. In December 1894, Crean was posted to HMS Wild Swan a screw sloop as the ship headed to South America to join the Pacific Station. In 1895, Crean was serving in the Americas aboard Royal Arthur, the flagship assigned to the Pacific squadron’s base at Esquimalt in Canada. He was by this time, rated an ordinary seaman. Less than a year later, while serving a second term of service aboard Wild Swan he was rated an able seaman.He later joined the Navy's torpedo school ship, Defiance. By 1899, Crean had advanced to the rate of petty officer, second class and was serving in Vivid.In 1900, Crean was ledgered to the cruiser HMS Ringarooma, which was part of the Royal Navy's Australian Squadron based in Sydney. On 18 December 1901, he was demoted from petty officer to able seaman for an unspecified misdemeanour.In December 1901, the Ringarooma was ordered to assist Robert Falcon Scott's ship Discovery when it was docked at Lyttelton Harbour awaiting to departure to Antarctica. When an able seaman of Scott's ship deserted after striking a petty officer, a replacement was required; Crean volunteered, and was accepted.
Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904
Discovery sailed to the Antarctic on 21 December 1901, and seven weeks later, on 8 February 1902, arrived in McMurdo Sound, where she anchored at a spot which was later designated "Hut Point".Here the men established the base from which they would launch scientific and exploratory sledging journeys. Crean proved to be one of the most efficient man-haulers in the party; over the expedition as a whole, only seven of the 48-member party logged more time in harness than Crean's 149 days.]Crean had a good sense of humour and was well liked by his companions. Scott's second-in-command, Albert Armitage, wrote in his book Two Years in the Antarctic that "Crean was an Irishman with a fund of wit and an even temper which nothing disturbed." Crean accompanied Lieutenant Michael Barne on three sledging trips across the Ross Ice Shelf, then known as the "Great Ice Barrier". These included the 12-man party led by Barne which set out on 30 October 1902 to lay depots in support of the main southern journey undertaken by Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson. On 11 November the Barne party passed the previous furthest south mark,set by Carsten Borchgrevink in 1900 at 78°50'S, a record which they held briefly until the southern party itself passed it on its way to an eventual 82°17'S. During the Antarctic winter of 1902 Discovery became locked in the ice. Efforts to free her during the summer of 1902–03 failed, and although some of the expedition's members (including Ernest Shackleton) left in a relief ship, Crean and the majority of the party remained in the Antarctic until the ship was finally freed in February 1904. After returning to regular naval duty, Crean was promoted to petty officer, first class, on Scott's recommendation.Between expeditions, 1904–1910
Crean came back to regular duty at the naval base at Chatham, Kent, serving first in Pembroke in 1904 and later transferring to the torpedo school on Vernon. Crean had caught Captain Scott's attention with his attitude and work ethic on the Discovery Expedition, and in 1906 Scott requested that Crean join him on Victorious.Over the next few years, Crean followed Scott successively to Albemarle, Essex and Bulwark.By 1907, Scott was planning his second expedition to the Antarctic. Meanwhile, Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, 1907–09, despite reaching a new furthest south record of 88°23'S, had failed to reach the South Pole. Scott was with Crean when the news of Shackleton's near miss became public; it is recorded that Scott observed to Crean: "I think we'd better have a shot next."Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913
Scott held Crean in high regard, so he was among the first people recruited for the Terra Nova Expedition, which set out for the Antarctic in June 1910, and one of the few men in the party with previous polar experience. After the expedition's arrival in McMurdo Sound in January 1911, Crean was as part of the 13-man team who established "One Ton Depot",130 statute miles (210 km) from Hut Point.so named because of the large amount of food and equipment cached there on the projected route to the South Pole. Returning from the depot to base camp at Cape Evans, Crean, accompanied by Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Henry "Birdie" Bowers, experienced near-disaster when camping on unstable sea ice. During the night the ice broke up, leaving the men adrift on an ice floe and separated from their sledges. Crean probably saved the group's lives, by leaping from floe to floe until he reached the Barrier edge and was able to summon help.Petty officers Edgar Evans and Crean mending sleeping bags (May 1911)Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance Expedition), 1914–1917
Later life
After returning to Britain in November 1916, Crean resumed naval duties. On 15 December 1916 he was promoted to the rank of warrant officer (as a boatswain), in recognition of his service on the Endurance, and was awarded his third Polar Medal. A month later, in April, he was granted a licence for the sale and consumption of alcohol from his dwelling house, a premises he had purchased in 1916. The business was left in the care of family while he served out his time in the Royal Navy. On 5 September 1917, Crean married Ellen Herlihy of Annascaul. In early 1920, Shackleton was organising another Antarctic expedition, later to be known as the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition. He invited Crean to join him, along with other officers from the Endurance. By this time, however, Crean's second daughter had arrived, and he had plans to open a business following his naval career. He turned down Shackleton's invitation.On his last naval assignment, with HMS Hecla, Crean suffered a bad fall which caused lasting effects to his vision. As a result, he was retired on medical grounds on 24 March 1920. He and Ellen opened a small public house in Annascaul, which he called the South Pole Inn.The couple had three daughters, Mary, Kate, and Eileen, although Kate died when she was four years old. Throughout his life, Crean remained an extremely modest man. When he returned to Kerry, he put all of his medals away and never again spoke about his experiences in the Antarctic. There is no reliable evidence of Crean giving any interviews to the press.Smith speculates that this may have been because Kerry was a hotbed of Irish nationalism and later Irish republicanism, and, along with County Cork, an epicentre of violence.The Crean family were once subject to a Black and Tan raid during the Irish War of Independence. Their inn was ransacked until the raiders happened across Crean's framed photo in Royal Navy dress uniform and medals. They then left his inn.On 13 April 1920, Tom Crean was present among crowds gathered in Tralee to protest against the treatment of republican prisoners who had gone on a hunger strike in Mountjoy jail. Crean's older brother was Cornelius Crean, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).Cornelius was based in County Cork, where he served with the RIC during the War of Independence.Sgt. Crean was killed during an IRA ambush near Upton on 25 April 1920.Statue of Crean in AnnascaulLegacy
- Mount Crean 8,630 feet (2,630 m) in Victoria Land, Antarctica and Mount Crean 2,300 feet (700 m) in Greenland
- Crean Glacier on South Georgia.
- Crean Lake on South Georgia.
- An eight-part 1985 television series, The Last Place on Earth, told the story of Scott's expedition to the South Pole. Hugh Grant and Max von Sydow starred with Irish actor Daragh O'Malley, who portrayed Tom Crean.
- A one-man play, Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer, has been widely performed since 2001 by author Aidan Dooley, including a special showing at the South Pole Inn, Annascaul, in October 2001. Present were Crean's daughters, Eileen and Mary, both in their 80s. Apparently he never told them stories of his exploits; according to Eileen: "He put his medals and his sword in a box ... and that was that. He was a very humble man".
- In July 2003, a bronze statue of Crean was unveiled across from his pub in Annascaul. It depicts him leaning against a crate whilst holding a pair of hiking poles in one hand and two of his beloved sled dog pups in the other.
- Until its closure in 2017, the Dingle Brewing Company produced 'Tom Crean Lager', named in his honour. In 2016, Crean's granddaughter, Aileen Crean O’Brien, launched 'Expedition Ale' in partnership with Torc Breweries
- In February 2021 it was announced that a new research vessel being commissioned by the Irish government’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marinewould be named 'RV Tom Crean', in Crean’s honour.
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48cm x 35cm Aer Lingus was founded on 15 April 1936, with a capital of £100,000. Its first chairman was Seán Ó hUadhaigh.Pending legislation for Government investment through a parent company, Aer Lingus was associated with Blackpool and West Coast Air Services which advanced the money for the first aircraft, and operated with Aer Lingus under the common title "Irish Sea Airways". Aer Lingus Teoranta was registered as an airline on 22 May 1936.The name Aer Lingus was proposed by Richard F O'Connor, who was County Cork Surveyor, as well as an aviation enthusiast. On 27 May 1936, five days after being registered as an airline, its first service began between Baldonnel Airfield in Dublin and Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport, the United Kingdom, using a six-seater de Havilland DH.84 Dragon biplane (registration EI-ABI), named Iolar (Eagle). Later that year, the airline acquired its second aircraft, a four-engined biplane de Havilland DH.86 Express named "Éire", with a capacity of 14 passengers. This aircraft provided the first air link between Dublin and London by extending the Bristol service to Croydon. At the same time, the DH.84 Dragon was used to inaugurate an Aer Lingus service on the Dublin-Liverpool route. The airline was established as the national carrier under the Air Navigation and Transport Act (1936). In 1937, the Irish government created Aer Rianta (now called Dublin Airport Authority), a company to assume financial responsibility for the new airline and the entire country's civil aviation infrastructure. In April 1937, Aer Lingus became wholly owned by the Irish government via Aer Rianta. The airline's first General Manager was Dr J.F. (Jeremiah known as 'Jerry') Dempsey, a chartered accountant, who joined the company on secondment from Kennedy Crowley & Co (predecessor to KPMG as Company Secretary in 1936 (aged 30) and was appointed to the role of General Manager in 1937. He retired 30 years later in 1967 at the age of 60. In 1938, a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide replaced Iolar, and the company purchased a second DH.86B. Two Lockheed 14s arrived in 1939, Aer Lingus' first all-metal aircraft.An Aer Lingus Douglas DC-3 at Manchester Airport in 1948 wearing the first postwar livery.
Post-war expansion
On 9 November 1945, regular services were resumed with an inaugural flight to London. From this point Aer Lingus aircraft, initially mostly Douglas DC-3s, were painted in a silver and green livery. The airline introduced its first flight attendants. In 1946, a new Anglo-Irish agreement gave Aer Lingus exclusive UK traffic rights from Ireland in exchange for a 40% holding by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). Because of Aer Lingus' growth the airline bought seven new Vickers Viking aircraft in 1947, however, these proved to be uneconomical and were soon sold.A Bristol 170 Freighter at Manchester Airport in 1953.A Vickers Viscount 808 in "green top" livery at Manchester Airport in 1963.First transatlantic service
A Boeing 720 in Aer Lingus-Irish International livery in 1965.Jet aircraft
A Fokker F27 Friendship at Manchester Airport in 1965. The F27 was used on short-haul services between 1958 and 1966.An Aviation Traders Carvair that was used as a vehicle freighter is seen loading a car at Bristol Airport in 1964. -
45cm x 34cm Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
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45cm x 34cm Aer Lingus was founded on 15 April 1936, with a capital of £100,000. Its first chairman was Seán Ó hUadhaigh.Pending legislation for Government investment through a parent company, Aer Lingus was associated with Blackpool and West Coast Air Services which advanced the money for the first aircraft, and operated with Aer Lingus under the common title "Irish Sea Airways". Aer Lingus Teoranta was registered as an airline on 22 May 1936.The name Aer Lingus was proposed by Richard F O'Connor, who was County Cork Surveyor, as well as an aviation enthusiast. On 27 May 1936, five days after being registered as an airline, its first service began between Baldonnel Airfield in Dublin and Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport, the United Kingdom, using a six-seater de Havilland DH.84 Dragon biplane (registration EI-ABI), named Iolar (Eagle). Later that year, the airline acquired its second aircraft, a four-engined biplane de Havilland DH.86 Express named "Éire", with a capacity of 14 passengers. This aircraft provided the first air link between Dublin and London by extending the Bristol service to Croydon. At the same time, the DH.84 Dragon was used to inaugurate an Aer Lingus service on the Dublin-Liverpool route. The airline was established as the national carrier under the Air Navigation and Transport Act (1936). In 1937, the Irish government created Aer Rianta (now called Dublin Airport Authority), a company to assume financial responsibility for the new airline and the entire country's civil aviation infrastructure. In April 1937, Aer Lingus became wholly owned by the Irish government via Aer Rianta. The airline's first General Manager was Dr J.F. (Jeremiah known as 'Jerry') Dempsey, a chartered accountant, who joined the company on secondment from Kennedy Crowley & Co (predecessor to KPMG as Company Secretary in 1936 (aged 30) and was appointed to the role of General Manager in 1937. He retired 30 years later in 1967 at the age of 60. In 1938, a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide replaced Iolar, and the company purchased a second DH.86B. Two Lockheed 14s arrived in 1939, Aer Lingus' first all-metal aircraft.An Aer Lingus Douglas DC-3 at Manchester Airport in 1948 wearing the first postwar livery.
Post-war expansion
On 9 November 1945, regular services were resumed with an inaugural flight to London. From this point Aer Lingus aircraft, initially mostly Douglas DC-3s, were painted in a silver and green livery. The airline introduced its first flight attendants. In 1946, a new Anglo-Irish agreement gave Aer Lingus exclusive UK traffic rights from Ireland in exchange for a 40% holding by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). Because of Aer Lingus' growth the airline bought seven new Vickers Viking aircraft in 1947, however, these proved to be uneconomical and were soon sold.A Bristol 170 Freighter at Manchester Airport in 1953.A Vickers Viscount 808 in "green top" livery at Manchester Airport in 1963.First transatlantic service
A Boeing 720 in Aer Lingus-Irish International livery in 1965.Jet aircraft
A Fokker F27 Friendship at Manchester Airport in 1965. The F27 was used on short-haul services between 1958 and 1966.An Aviation Traders Carvair that was used as a vehicle freighter is seen loading a car at Bristol Airport in 1964. -
49cm x 38cm William Clarke & Son was a tobacco company that was founded in 1830 at South Main Street, Cork, Ireland. In January 1924, following the formation of the Irish Free State, the United Kingdom trade of William Clarke & Son was transferred to Dublin and taken over by Ogden's.
William Clarke & Son, Dublin
William Clarke was founded in 1830 at South Main Street in Cork, however by 1870 the manufacturing side of the business had all been transferred to Hare Place, Scotland Road, Liverpool, with only depots remaining in Ireland. Following the formation of the Irish Free State in 1926, the Liverpool based operation was taken over by Ogden’s, while a new factory was set up at South Circular Road in Dublin to produce tobacco and snuff under the William Clarke & Son brand. In 1929 William Clarke was amalgamated with Wills’s Irish branch, which resulted in Wills’s Irish production being integrated into the new South Circular Road factory in Dublin, though senior management were based in Wills’s Bristol operations and the Irish entity ultimately reported back into Bristol. -
28cm x 33cm Christy Moore is one of Ireland's best known folk singer's, songwriter's and guitarist. He is one of the founding members of Planxty and Moving Hearts. His first album, Paddy on the Road was recorded with Dominic Behan in 1969. In 2007, he was named as Ireland's greatest living musician in RTÉ's People of the Year Awards.
Early life
Moore was born in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland and attended Dominican College Secondary School. He was originally a bank employee who wanted to express himself using traditional music. During a bank strike in 1966, which lasted twelve weeks, he went to England, as many striking officials did, but didn't return when the strike was settled. "I had a wild and wonderful time in England, with no bank manager looking over my shoulder," he said. Doing general labouring work, he frequented the folk clubs and the Irish music pubs where he met Seamus Ennis, Margaret Barry, Luke Kelly, Martin Byrnes and many other traditional musicians.When Irish singing trio The Grehan Sisters, with whom Moore was previously acquainted, moved to the north of England from Dublin in 1967, they assisted Moore to get a higher profile by giving him contacts and support slots on their concerts.Musical career
1973 brought his first major release, Prosperous, which brought together the four musicians who shortly thereafter formed Planxty: Liam O'Flynn, Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny. For a time they called themselves "CLAD", an acronym of their names, but soon decided on Planxty. After leaving Planxty in 1975, Moore continued on his solo career, reforming his old band on occasion (which he has been doing ever since). He also formed the band Moving Hearts with Lunny and five other musicians in 1980. In 1987 he appeared on Gay Byrne's The Late Late Show performing with The Dubliners for their 25th anniversary. In 2000, he published his autobiography, One Voice. Moore's earlier lifestyle resulted in a decline in health and several operations. Moore's battle with alcohol, and subsequent heart operations, have taken their toll. At the end of the 1990s, Moore reduced his workload for medical reasons. Some of Moore's songs are heavily influenced by drink and the effects of drink, his song "Delirium Tremens" being a good example. Listening to Johnny Mulhern's song "Hard Cases" caused Moore to recall the Galway drinking scene with local musicians Mickey Finn, Pete Galligan, Corky and Terry Smith. On 17 April 2009, Moore released his first new studio album in four years, entitled Listen, and promoted it through a series of live gigs. In December 2011, Moore released the album Folk Tale. His next album Where I Come From was released in November 2013 and features a new protest song called "Arthur's Day". The album peaked at number three in the Irish album charts. On the road was released in November 2017, while his most recent album Magic Nightswas released in November 2019.Moore is best known for his political and social commentary which reflects a left-wing, Irish republican perspective, despite the fact that his mother was a Fine Gael county councillor and parliamentary candidate in Kildare. He supported the republican H-Block protestors with the albums H-Block in 1978, the launch of which was raided by the police, and The Spirit of Freedom.He has also recorded songs by the hunger striker Bobby Sands, including "Back Home in Derry" which is based on Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". He ceased supporting the military activities of the IRA in 1987 as a result of the Enniskillen bombing. Political songs he has performed throughout his career include Mick Hanly's "On the Blanket" about the protests of republican prisoners, "Viva la Quinta Brigada", about the Irishmen who fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco, and "Minds Locked Shut" about Bloody Sunday in Derry. Moore has endorsed a long list of leftist support causes, ranging from El Salvador to Mary Robinson in the 1990 presidential election. At the Glastonbury Festival in 2005, he sang about the Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie. He supported the anti-nuclear movement in Ireland playing in many concerts and at festivals in Carnsore Point for the cause.
Banned songs
"They Never Came Home" is a song about the Stardust fire of 1981 where 48 people died. The song was recorded on the Ordinary Man album and was released on the B-side of a single in 1985. The song achieved notoriety when Moore was taken to court over claims in the song prejudical to an ongoing court case determining compensation. For instance, the song claimed, "hundreds of children are injured and maimed, and all just because the fire exits were chained". Mr Justice Murphy ordered the Ordinary Man album to be withdrawn from the shops, and costs were awarded against Moore. "Another Song is Born" was recorded for the album's re-release. "They Never Came Home" later appeared on his box set and on the album Where I come from.Musical style
His solo style includes driving rhythms on guitar and bodhrán as well as slower ballads.Family
Moore's brother Barry, whose stage name is Luka Bloom, is also a singer-songwriter. His nephew, Conor Byrne, is also a traditional flautist and tin whistle player, with Christy appearing on his Wind Dancer album. Memorable eventsDetention incident, 2004
In October 2004, Moore was stopped and detained by Special Branch officers at the Welsh port of Holyhead, taken into an office and questioned about the lyrics of his songs. The following day, he released a statement saying: "My driver and I were stopped and held for two hours at Holyhead last Monday, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2002. My driver and I were held separately in two interrogation rooms. I found the whole experience threatening. I was questioned about the contents of my briefcase." Despite initial reports to the contrary, the singer's van, which was full of musical equipment, was not searched. "I was questioned about lyrics of songs and I was asked a lot of personal questions about members of my family and my children and about my home. At no time was I given any explanation as to why I was being held and interrogated in this manner", he added. He said the fact that Irish people are still being treated this way on their way to Britain is very "saddening". "I had hoped to deal with this matter out of the public domain. But seeing as it has become a news item, I feel the need to offer my side of the story. I found the whole affair quite frightening."Desert Island Discs
In June 2007, Moore was a guest on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs.He selected mainly Irish folk music that had inspired him and spoke of personal and political issues that had shaped his life, choosing a set of Uilleann pipes as his luxury item and The English and Scottish Popular Ballads as his choice book.Penguin book of Irish poetry
In 2010 Christy Moore's song "Lisdoonvarna" which he wrote gained entry in The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry.Oxegen
On Sunday 10 July 2011 Moore joined Coldplay on stage at the 2011 Oxegen Festival performing the song "Ride On". -
37cm x 47cm Limerick Colman's (est. in 1814) is an English manufacturer of mustard and other sauces, formerly based and produced for 160 years at Carrow, in Norwich, Norfolk. Owned by Unilever since 1995, Colman's is one of the oldest existing food brands, famous for a limited range of products, almost all varieties of mustard. In 2019 the Colman’s factory in Norwich rolled its last jar of mustard off the production line and its Use By Date was changed for the occasion to: "Norwich's Last. By Its Finest. July 24th 2019". Colman’s continued making other condiments at the Carrow site until closing its doors in early 2020. In the early 1800s, Jeremiah Colman began making mustard at a water mill near Norwich in the village of Bawburgh. To create a tangy flavour, he blended brown mustard (Brassica juncea) with white mustard (Sinapis alba). Jeremiah founded Colman's of Norwich in 1814, at the Stoke Holy Cross mill on the River Tas, four miles south of Norwich. In 1823 he took his adopted nephew, James, into the business which became J. & J. Colman. In 1851 J.J. Colman took over the business. By 1865 production had transferred to a large factory at Carrow Road on land at Thorpe Hamlet, bought from the Norfolk Railway to the south of Norwich,where the firm operated until the Norwich closure. From 1855 the firm introduced its distinctive yellow packaging and bull's head logo, and in 1866 was granted the Royal Warrantas manufacturers of mustard to Queen Victoria. Her Majesty's household still uses Colman's today. The Colman family's pioneering achievements in social welfare are part of Norwich's history. In 1857 a school was opened for the employees' children, while in 1864 the firm employed a nurse to help sick members of staff, a social revolution at the time. From 1896 Jeremiah Colman became chairman.In 1903, the firm took over rival mustard maker Keen Robinson & Company,through which it also acquired the Robinsons barley water and baby food business.The purpose of the acquisition was to reduce competition within the mustard business. By 1909 the company employed 2,300 people. Keen's production was moved from London to Norwich in 1925. Together with Reckitt, the company acquired French's, the American mustard manufacturer, in 1926 for £750,000. In 1938 it merged with Reckitts and Sons of Hull to form the Reckitt & Colman household products conglomerate. From 1997 to 2001, Colman's were the main sponsors of Norwich City Football Club. The Colman's part of the business was demerged in 1995 and Colman's became part of Unilever UK Ltd. As well as mustard, it applies its name to condiments, sauces and other foodstuffs. Reckitt and Colman engaged in cost-cutting as it prepared to sell the brand, getting rid of the agronomy department, which had looked after plant breeding and seed development. Colman's maintains links with Norwich. The founding family are commemorated in street names such as Colman Road (part of the A140 inner ring road), on which is situated Colman's First and Middle Schools. In addition, the Colman House residence at the University of East Anglia is named after the company and Jeremiah Colman.
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24cm x 40cm The original company was founded in Belfast by Archibald Kirker and William Greer in 1885. From their bonded warehouse on Academy St. in the heart of Belfast they sourced and blended the best of Irish Whiskey. The Shamrock Irish Whiskey was one such blend.They went on to found the Connswater distillery and became one of ireland’s largest exporters.
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50cm x 45cm x 10cm Co Carlow Sir Alfred James Munnings, KCVO PRA RI (8 October 1878 – 17 July 1959) was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken critic of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund, he earned several prestigious commissions after the Great War that made him wealthy. Between 1912 and 1914 he was a member of the Newlyn School of artists. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics, the 1932 Summer Olympics, and the 1948 Summer Olympics. Munnings was president of the Royal Academy of Arts from 1944 until his death.
Biography
Alfred Munnings was born on 8 October 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk to Christian parents. His father was the miller and Alfred grew up surrounded by the activity of a busy working mill with horses and horse-drawn carts arriving daily. After leaving Framlingham College at the age of fourteenhe was apprenticed to a Norwich printer, designing and drawing advertising posters for the next six years, attending the Norwich School of Art in his spare time. When his apprenticeship ended, he became a full-time painter. The loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint, and in 1899 two of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsiesand horses. He was associated with the Newlyn School of painters, and while there met Florence Carter-Wood (1888–1914), a young horsewoman and painter. They married on 19 January 1912 but she tried to kill herself on their honeymoon and did so in 1914. Munnings bought Castle House, Dedham, in 1919, describing it as 'the house of my dreams'.He used the house and adjoining studio extensively throughout the rest of his career, and it was opened as the Munnings Art Museum in the early 1960s, after Munnings's death. Munnings remarried in 1920; his second wife was another horsewoman, Violet McBride (née Haines). There were no children from either marriage. Although his second wife encouraged him to accept commissions from society figures, Munnings became best known for his equine painting: he often depicted horses participating in hunting and racing.War artists
Charge of Flowerdew's Squadron(1918), Canadian War MuseumFelling a Tree in the Vosges (1918), Canadian War MuseumStudy of a Swiss Bull (before 1919), Canadian War MuseumLe Comte d'Etchegoyen features Olivier d'Etchegoyen, the headquarters staff interpreter for the Canadian Cavalry Brigade (before 1919), Canadian War MuseumShelters in Smallfoot Wood (before 1919), Canadian War MuseumLater career
Munnings was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1944. He was made a Knight Bachelor in July of the same year,and was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1947 New Year Honours.His presidency is best known for the valedictory speech he gave in 1949, in which he attacked modernism. The broadcast was heard by millions of listeners to BBC radio. An evidently inebriated Munnings claimed that the work of Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso had corrupted art. He recalled that Winston Churchill had once said to him, "Alfred, if you met Picasso coming down the street would you join with me in kicking his ... something something?" to which Munnings said he replied, "Yes Sir, I would". In 1950, Munnings, got hold of some of Stanley Spencer's Scrapbook Drawings and initiated a police prosecution against him for obscenity. Munnings died at Castle House, Dedham, Essex, on 17 July 1959. His ashes were interred at St Paul's Cathedral, with an epitaph by John Masefield ('O friend, how very lovely are the things, The English things, you helped us to perceive'). After his death, his widow turned their house in Dedham into a museum of his work. The village pub in Mendham is named after him, as is a street there. Munnings was portrayed by Dominic Cooper in the film Summer in February, which was released in Britain in 2013.The film is adapted from a novel by Jonathan Smith.At auction
His sporting art works have enjoyed popularity in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere. As of 2007, the highest price paid for a Munnings painting was $7,848,000 for The Red Prince Mare, far above his previous auction record of $4,292,500 set at Christie's in December 1999. It was one of four works by Munnings in the auction. The Red Prince Mare is a 40 by 60 inches (100 by 150 cm) oil on canvas that was executed in 1921 and had an estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000,000.Writings
Munnings wrote an autobiography in three volumes:- An Artist's Life, London: Museum Press, 1950
- The Second Burst, London: Museum Press, 1951
- The Finish, London: Museum Pres
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47cm x 37cm Limerick The building itself it is a terraced eight-bay four-storey late-Victorian commercial building, It was built across 1895 and 1896 for J McCarthy and Sons, Wholesale Tea and Wine Merchants. Named the Clancarty (family of Carty) Buildings, the building was designed by architect and built by John Delaney. The Cork Examiner on 10 August 1896 (p.9) describes the impressive building: “No person passing through George’s street, can fail to see and admire the beautiful structure, which has just been completed. The facade is 54 feet long and 48 feet high, divided into four storeys, with round headed windows in the classic style, and extends more than the whole length of George’s Street, as between Cook street and Marlboro Street. The ground floor is divided by handsome wrought pilasters and consoles, each console decorated with floral swags, with a richly-moulded dental cornice immediately over the facia. This basement is perfectly fire proof, the walls being built of brick and cement, whilst the ceiling and floor over are composed of a solid block of concrete. The first, second and third floors immediately overhead are altogether occupied by the firm as warerooms to meet the requirements of their immense business as tea and wine merchants and whiskey shippers, the growth of which necessitates this great extension of their premises”.
J McCarthy and Sons, Wholesale Tea and Wine Merchants as shown in Goads Insurance Map of Cork, 1906 (source: Kieran McCarthy) Description of Clancarty Buildings, Cork Examiner, 10 August 1896, p.9 (source: Cork City Library)