100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #10 – The Guinness Waterford Tankard (1960s)

But when a cauliflower-wigged tankard of brown stout crowned the repast, his rapture knew no bounds. He pressed it with ecstasy to his lips, and sang joyously –

Porter! Drink for the noble souls!

Raise the foaming tankard high!

Water drink, you water think –

So said Johnson – so say I!

Merrie England in the Olden Time by George Daniel (Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 7 - J. M. Mason, 1841)

There is probably no piece of vintage, beer-related glassware that is talked about in the same reverential tone as the Guinness Waterford tankard. For many collectors of breweriana finding an absolutely perfect example is akin to discovering The Holy Grail, and almost as hard to acquire. Even those who show indifference to Guinness itself have a fondness for the barrel-like shape, the curvaceous handle, and that gold lettering with the harp sitting above. It has, for many at least, a deserved iconic status in Irish - and British - beer history, much more so than the relatively recent interloper that comes in the shape of the tulip pint glass.

Admittedly, the quotation above by George Daniel is a little out of kilter with the timeline, material and origins of the beer-related item we are focussing on here but it is an evocative piece of prose and poetry in honour of a tankard of stout. The wonderfully described ‘cauliflower-wigged’ and ‘foaming’ description of the head on the vessel in that piece is at odds with how we see draught stout’s image now, but it might be viewed by some as a better manifestation and a more inviting portrayal of that drink than the sterile, domed band of nitrogenated bubbles to which we have become accustomed these days.

-o-

Although our tankard was indeed made in Waterford it is not strictly speaking the ‘Waterford Glass’ that is world renowned for its quality, substance, and appeal, but rather a different quality of product that was being made by the company for domestic and bar use from when the firm started producing glass in Ballytruckle just outside Waterford in 1947. The material used for these items was soda glass which contains no lead or potash as opposed to the crystal glass that the company is well known for producing. This type of glass was being made right up until 1970 in the company’s plant at Johnstown - where they had moved to - in the centre of the city, and was still being sold for a number of years after that. As well as Guinness tankards the company also produced branded glasses for many other drinks such as Carling Black Label, Idea, Harp, Carlsberg¹ and probably Time, Smithwicks, Phoenix, Double Diamond, Celebration and many others. Interestingly, they also produced another iconic piece of glassware, the stemmed glass for Irish Coffee with the gold band on top and a shamrock on the flattened section of the stem, which were exported to North America in large quantities¹ These, along with the barware and the many lines just for domestic use, meant that the Waterford Glass Company were quite a prolific maker of daily-use glassware as well as high-end lead crystal. It is probably fair to say that almost every Irish household of a certain vintage has a piece of ‘Waterford Glass’ in a cupboard or on a shelf, although most owners would not recognise those pieces as such.

Many of these lines were stickered with a rectangular label on their base with the words ‘Waterford Domestic – Made in the Republic of Ireland’  or a lozenge shaped one in silver and black with 'Waterford Barware - Made in the Republic of Ireland.' Those stickers are obviously now quite rare on any glasses used in the pub trade but some examples still exist with the label in place and intact.

Without some insider knowledge of the company's process of making all of these glasses we can only speculate as to how exactly they were created, but they appear to have been mould-blown by mouth rather than by machine and then, in the cases of tankards, the handles were dropped on and shaped by hand afterwards. This would seem to be the most efficient way of producing such a large quantity of relatively uniform products in a cost-effective way - but this is mostly speculation.

-o-

Glass tankards were quite a rare thing in Irish pubs in any part of our history up until the 1960s, with pewter mugs and fluted or plain conical pint glasses (tumblers as they were often called) being used up to that time along with Noniks with their pronounced bump near the top of the glass. In England certainly, and perhaps the rest of Britain, glass tankards were much more in use regionally at least, with dimpled mugs and multi-faceted tankards being relatively popular up to this period. This may be the reason why Guinness decided to launch this style of glass for its new Draught Guinness once they had ironed out any issues with the Easi-Serve dispense of their new stout and were viewing a campaign to install the new system in as many pubs as they could on these islands. Our near neighbours were huge consumers of Guinness in various forms, and the London brewery at Park Royal was in full swing so it would make sense that decisions were made based on that market rather than the Irish one.

The tankards weren’t used at the initial launch of Draught Guinness in 1961 but appear to have been rolled out sometime after 1963, and there are certainly surviving Irish examples of the glasses with verification marks for that year. In fact, early in Draught Guinness’s launch in England it was advertised in dimple mugs, a thought which would horrify and perplex many of today’s most militant Guinness drinkers!

Alan Wood, who took up the position of Guinness Advertising Manager in Britain in 1961 states in an undated note in ‘The Guinness Book of Guinness’ that the tankards ‘just happened’ and were part of that Draught Guinness roll-out ‘throughout Britain’ – and presumably Ireland around the same time. He also implies that the Waterford Glass Company were looking for a line that they could relatively easily produce, which they could use as a starting point to expand into this type of branded, bespoke barware product, and something that would also help with training and apprenticeships. The discussion between the two companies focussed on a lightweight, ‘generous’ looking tankard that would show-off the aesthetics of the beer, and that had a ‘quality feel’ that would suit a pint which would be a little more expensive than the norm. Waterford Glass came up with the design and at a price that very much suited Guinness’s budget. Interestingly, Mr. Wood says in the same note that ‘hundreds of thousands’ were produced and possibly a million!² (There are currently no figures available as to how many were actually produced although the appear to have been packed in boxes of six, and if every pub on these islands received a box or two then the numbers would soon add up ...)

The golden logo applied to the tankards comes in at least two variants, the first being the lettering that had been around for decades with slight changes up until sometime in the mid-sixties when the company changed to the second version, the Hobbs or Hobbs-face stencil-like font with gaps in the narrow points of the letters. (This was first used in 1963 on posters and named after Bruce Hobbs at the SH Benson advertising company, who was allegedly inspired by street signs in Paris and the crude stencilled lettering on hop sacks.³) The earlier font also seems to have a less commonly seen version of the harp logo which differs a lot from the more ornate versions seen on bottle labels and was possibly for ease of printing, although it was replaced by a lightly simplified version on the later glasses and elsewhere. Also of note is that on some earlier versions of the half pint glass the logo faces a right-handed drinker whereas it usually points outward and away from them - and should do from a marketing standpoint on any glass. The tankards came in pint and half pint sizes, as well as a smaller run of three-pint versions for use as displays in pubs. These have become the real Holy Grail of Holy Grails for collectors and feature the word ‘Draught’ above ‘Guinness’ in the early letter and logo style.

In print, the glasses appear to have been first used in advertising Draught Guinness on posters in Ireland in 1963³ and in newspapers in this country by the following year. They first appeared in Britain on advertising posters in 1966 /1967, when ‘the tankard was adopted as the symbol’ for the product.⁴ (Those advertisements also feature the ‘older’ style typeface, which appears to change around the end of the decade to the newer version, as mentioned above.) The tankard falls out of favour with marketing companies around 1980 and rarely appears after that, replaced by the conical glass for a while and then the aforementioned tulip pint glass we are now very familiar with from advertisements and social media.

Verification marks seem to have been applied around the time that the glasses were originally made and before the logo was applied, this can lead to errors and confusion in dating certain glasses. For example there is an officially verified tankard from 1969 which has the logo for Cork city’s 800-year anniversary in 1985 on the side of the glass. Curiously, this version has the Guinness logo on both sides, which wasn’t a common practice and these may have just been commemorative gifts. If it was used in pubs then this Cork version helps to show how long these tankards lasted in the trade, which would have been about two decades. It should be noted that these tankards weren’t universally used for draught Guinness on these islands, as many publicans used some of the more ‘normal’ styles of practical glassware instead or as well.

The design may have been an excellent conception and these glasses were relatively tough but they were notorious for cracking and breaking at their Achilles' Heel where the handle meets the top of the glass - a fault often seen on specimens found for sale today. They were not really suitable for the modern pub – not to mention how unkind dishwashing machines were to gold lettering – so it is unlikely that the publican's who used them mourned their passing, although many have revived or remade the old red Guinness lightbox tap fronts that carries their image, while serving the beer in curvaceous but unhandled pint glasses just to add insult to injury.

Many also disappeared out of pubs by way of theft. In 1978 in Lincolnshire in England two ladies were convicted and fined £25 each for stealing two ‘special and distinctive [half-pint] Guinness mugs’ from a pub having been reported to the authorities by the publican – both women admitted to ‘taking the glasses worth £1.20, out of the pub in their handbags’ according to a local paper. It appears from this that Guinness charged the publican £1.20 for a half-pint tankard.

-o-

There were other, later versions of this Guinness tankard too. A pressed glass edition was available from probably the 1980s with gold or beige lettering and it can be easily identified by its flattened, moulded handle as distinct from the hand-added, rounded handle on the originals. German glass producers Sahm also produced a 400ml similar tankard with the Hobbs typeface in gold in the 1970s. There was also a French-made half pint version with a more rounded handle⁵, and Viners of Sheffield produced an attractive pewter version too, both of these are probably also from the seventies.

After the Guinness tankard was launched it opened the gates for almost every other Irish brand of beer and soon tankards were everywhere in pubs in Ireland in the sixties and early seventies. Time, Smithwicks, Double Diamond, Phoenix, Carling Black Label, Celebration, Bass, Watney’s Red Barrell and Macardles all had glass tankards of various types and designs, many made by the Waterford Glass Company as mentioned above. The Harp tankard, in its second or third version, was the last to be used in pubs, probably in the mid-nineties and long after the other brands had disappeared - or their tankards had at least - or changed to something less cumbersome to suit a changing drinker. [EDIT: The Franciscan Well Brewery were using a branded glass tankard for their beer up until quite recently, and possibly still do - thanks to Keith @j_k357 on Twitter.) Unbranded glass tankards were also used in Irish public houses for a time, before finally falling out of favour in the late nineties apart from the occasional hold-out like J & K Walsh in Waterford who were using a tankard for Guinness and other beers up until relatively recently.

-o-

Perhaps the glass tankard is due a revival here in Ireland? Maybe an enterprising microbrewery will include one in their selection of beer glasses?

So hopefully one day soon we can pour a proper stout into a branded glass tankard again to create that cauliflower-wigged stout, and raise that foaming tankard high …

So say I!

Liam K

¹Waterford Crystal – The Creation of a Global Brand, 1700-2009 by John M. Hearne

² The Guinness Book of Guinness 1935-1985 edited by Edward Guinness

³ The Book of Guinness Advertising by Brian Sibley

⁴ The Book of Guinness Advertising by Jim Davies

⁵ The Guinness Archive Online Collection

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached images are the author's own and cannot be used elsewhere without the author's permission. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive and other sources are as credited.

100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #9 - At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (1939)

When things go wrong and will not come right,

Though you do the best you can,

When life looks black as the hour of night –

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Excerpt, ‘The Workman’s Friend’ from At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan)

There seems to be a tenuous - or at times blatant - connection between certain generations of Ireland's most well-known writers and our beer and general drinking history. Be it Joyce, Behan, Beckett or in this case Flann O’Brien, there is always something mentioned or alluded to in the text that directly or indirectly links back to a past of public houses, or lost beer brands, or a long-forgotten part of our drinking culture. At Swim-Two-Birds is certainly an interesting book, and although it might not be classed as overly challenging compared to other novels such as Joyce’s Ulysses, it is by no means an easy or simple text for most readers to get their heads and hearts around given the writing style, storyline and movements of the characters. But that tradition - for want of a better word - of drink being an almost integral part of Irish literature is there from the start in O'Brien's book, as there is a mention in the opening pages to a mirror bearing the names of ‘Messrs. Watkins, Jameson and Pim’ and their ‘proprietary brand of beer’ (presumably O’Connell’s Ale) which the book’s narrator uses as a shaving mirror in his bedroom.

But of course, this book is best known for its reference to that ‘Pint of Plain’ from the opening quotation.

-o-

Brian O’Nolan, or Flann O’Brien or Myles na gCopaleen or George Knowall to give him just a few of his semi-official names, was born in Strabane in 1911, one of twelve children. He lived most of his life in Dublin working at various jobs while writing books, newspaper columns and other works. He certainly had a quite difficult live but his biography is not the focus of this piece, but rather it is his first novel At Swim-Two-Birds and in particular a piece of poetry - or 'pome' - written by a fictional poet* called Jem Casey and titled ‘The Workman’s Friend.’ The verses are recited in a public house by Paul Shanahan, one of the main characters in the book and is an ode to the comfort and healing qualities of a ‘Pint of Plain.’ The book itself, although well received by his peers, wasn’t a bestseller on publication, and indeed it wasn’t really until it was republished in the 1960s that it would be seen as a classic piece of Irish literature by a wider audience.

The verses of this ode to ‘a pint of plain’ have been much spoken of, printed, sung, and repeated since they were first published and the term is still used right up to this day in print and on social media, but what exactly was ‘a pint of plain?’ As it appears that many use it without thinking on the actual meaning of the word ‘plain.’

'Plain' in this case is short for ‘plain porter,’ a term whose use goes back to the 1700s, and it was the weaker sibling to ‘stout porter.’ And stout in this case means a stronger porter (the word stout was used for other styles of beer too in the past), and although we won’t go into the much-repeated and often wrong history of porter to any great extent here, we can generally say that most breweries in Ireland had two strengths of this dark beer for non-export consumption, or at least two styles that were more most popular with drinkers on this island.

So, in very general terms, many Irish breweries in the late 18th and on into the very early 20th century had a weaker porter called variously X Porter, X Stout, Single Stout and other names, and also a stronger version generally called Double Stout, Extra Stout, XX Porter or XX Stout. (This is somewhat of an over-simplification, as even these various porters which are casually grouped together here could be wildly different in strength and ingredients depending on the era and the brewery - but you get the point.) There were other porters being brewed, including ones for export, with some breweries producing various other strengths in between, but this is a fair summation of the two types most commonly available. The lighter in strength of these beers came to be known by drinkers as just ‘plain’ - hence the ‘Pint of Plain’ - and the stronger was more often than not known just as ‘stout.’

Most stout was bottled by independent bottlers or by the publican or grocer and getting a pint of draught stout from a cask appears to have been relatively rare, especially outside of the main urban centres on the island. The bottle of stout ruled the countertops and tables in the pubs in most of Ireland, with its weaker sibling, plain porter, available mostly in the big cities like Dublin and Belfast. Some porter was indeed bottled but much of it was served from casks and was essentially a live 'conditioned' product containing active yeast to produce carbonation. It would remain being sold that way until the early 1970s, when the production of Guinness’s porter - the last of its type – ceased and was totally usurped by Guinness Draught.

And so should have died ‘The Pint of Plain’ …

-o-

Except it didn’t, or at least the term itself remained, but instead it was transferred to a pint of draught stout and usually the Guinness version (rather than Murphy’s or Beamish) which is marketed as a such rather than a 'porter' regardless of its strength and taste. It is certainly possible to make an argument that draught Guinness is the modern equivalent of that lost porter in alcohol content, and thanks to the marketing gimmick and the aesthetic need of the two-part pour, which was supposed to imitate the high and low carbonated mix of how Guinness’s porter was served in some public houses - mostly in Northern Ireland.^# There is also the fact that stout is a type of porter (as it is also a beer regardless of what people seem to think) when taken in the modern sense and usage of the words.

But if we revisit the text we need to take the words verbatim. So that given the time it was written and what was available in the public houses that the author was familiar with then the drink referred to was a cask conditioned single porter, and some would therefore say that this lost porter is the only drink that the moniker ‘Plain’ can be used for - even though some characters appear to drink just stout elsewhere in the book.

Does that mean we can’t ever use the term ‘a Pint of Plain’ ever again? Well one could again argue that the only truly legitimate pint of plain can be something that is called ‘porter’ by the brewery, is served on cask, and said brewery would also need to brew a stronger version they call their stout so that they have both it and a ‘plain.’ There might be a little leeway on the cask stipulation but the assertion certainly needs to obey the other rules for the term to be used, and then and only then, some might argue, can you say that you are drinking a ‘Pint of Plain’….

But of course in reality you can call your pint anything you like.

-o-

Finally, the poem’s title of a ‘The Workman’s Friend,’ or versions of it, seems to have been a common enough term even before the publication of At Swim-Two-Birds, as The Irish Independent on the 2nd of January 1917 carried in a piece about price increases in Dublin the following comment:

‘The pint of “plain” or workingman’s drink, goes up to 5d.’

This shows that the connection between plain and workingmen – unsurprisingly – is older than the book, and probably quite a bit older, plus given the wording it seemed in common parlance, and of course beer itself was often seen as a worker’s drink anyway.

Quite rightly ...

(Here's the link to object #10)

Liam K

*Possibly based on a poet called James Casey

^# It is worth highlighting that there is very little evidence of the practice being widespread, and much of the country was drinking stout from bottles anyway. Incidentally, the jug pour was probably more common, where a high carbonated porter was poured into a jug to left settle before being used to top up glasses. There is a video of this exact practice which some claim show the high-low pour but it shows no such thing. I have written more about this topic here.

Further Reading:

A Biography on Flann O'Brien here.

More on the Pint of Plain by Gary Gillman here.

Martyn Cornell has some porter history here.

And the complete poem or 'pome' is everywhere ...

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. The attached image is the author's own and cannot be used elsewhere without the author's permission. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive.