Connie and I were in Dublin earlier this year. It’s impossible to leave without a visit to the Guinness Storehouse, which is many things, but is essentially a beer museum. If Homer Simpson died and went to Heaven, it would look like this place.
You have to really like beer to sit through lectures on
barley and hops. I kept wishing I could see some examples of Guinness’ great
advertising. I’d been admiring antiques based on their posters and ads in the
local pub windows. Why couldn’t that be a display here?
It sure was. These are my terrible pictures of their display
cases featuring their historical, humorous and darned effective campaign. And
not just the billboards, but the bric-a-brac that adorned pub shelves for
years.
The Storehouse Shop has its share of T-shirts and key chains
adorned with the well-known Guinness logo. I was only interested in one item,
and I was glad to have found it. It’s Gilroy
Was Good for Guinness by David Hughes, a splendid hardcover book on the
career of portraitist and watercolorist John Gilroy, who created the cartoons
that became ubiquitous. The color illustrations are sumptuous and brilliant,
with many roughs and first drafts. There’s
even one that shows other artists at the ad agency how to duplicate his color
palette. I strongly recommend it, especially to other cartoonists and
illustrators.
