100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects: #25 – Keg Harp Tankard (1965)

Goodbye to the Port and Brandy,

To the Vodka and the Stag,

To the Schmiddick and the Harpic,

The bottle, draught and keg ...

Delirium Tremens – Christy Moore - 1985

It is probably fair to say that there are two well-known glass beer tankards engrained in the memories of Irish beer drinkers. One is - of course - the Guinness Waterford Barware tankard that is familiar to anyone with even a vague awareness of the company’s branded glassware beyond the tulip pint glass, or who has seen its image on retro signs and advertisements, or perhaps on those old-style dispensers that have become quite popular again on certain bar counters. But those fragile, thin-walled mugs had a tougher and heftier cousin in the same sixties and seventies period, which was of course the Harp tankard. Like the Guinness tankard, it was used in Harp’s marketing campaign, especially on beermats where its outline in yellow and blue stood out from others. It was seen to be drank by Vikings, and it and its contents were dreamed about by sweaty men in foreign lands longing for a piece of home, and a look from Sally O’Brien. It is certainly an iconic piece of glassware by any standard terms.

Harp lager itself has its origins in Dundalk, Co. Louth, where in 1959 Dr. Hermann Muender, a German brewmaster who had worked at the Dom Brewery in Cologne amongst other places, was charged by Guinness to build a lager brewery and create a new beer on the site of the old Great Northern Brewery. It was perhaps a reaction by the company to the perceived threat by - and increased sales in - continental lagers in recent years with brands such as Carlsberg already making inroads in Ireland, where it and other continental lagers were seen as cool and trendy by the young drinkers of the 1960s. But where there is threat there is also opportunity, and brewing commenced in 1960 with the launch of just a bottled product at first, as this was the standard way of serving lagers at this time. According to Dr. Muender the first three-dozen bottles produced were sent to Kennedy’s Railway Bar opposite the brewery on the Carrick Road, having been bottled in the bottling plant in old Cairnes brewery in Drogheda.

The next step was to launch the beer in the UK, which happened in 1961, and soon after it was being brewed there too - and the whole Harp Anglo-Irish history is a story in itself.* A stronger version of the lager variously known as Harp Extra, Harp Special or Harp Blue was launched in Ireland in late 1963 having been on sale overseas previously, and finally, a year later, a draught version of the standard lager first appeared.

And so ‘Keg Harp,’ as this draught product was first termed, became available in 1964 in Ireland, and advertisements featuring the tankard first appear in that year. In Ireland this was the decade when kegged, pasteurised and filtered beers began to dominate and replace bottled beers. Kegged Guinness had been around for a number of years in various serving formats, and there was now an influx of English ale brands encroaching on the Irish pub scene, leading in 1965 to the development of new Smithwick Draught by Guinness (having acquired 99% of the shares in the brewery the previous year) in an attempt to compete with those ‘foreign’ brands, even if some were brewed on the island. The launch of a draught version of Harp meant that from the mid-sixties the Guinness company was in a great position to compete in the three main beer styles on the emerging war theatre that was the bar counters of public house around the whole of the island, and beyond of course.

All of this meant that new glassware was now required in the shape of pint and half-pint receptacles, and at exactly this point during the sixties and early seventies there was a small craze for glass beer mugs in Ireland. Guinness Draught got the aforementioned Waterford Barware tankards, as did Smithwick’s Draught in a different style - a reuse of the Time rebrand ones from the previous year or so - plus there were quite a few others such as Phoenix, Celebration, Double Diamond and quite a few others. The original stemmed Harp glasses for the bottled products were also made by Waterford Glass’s barware division, but for their new draught lager Guinness went in a different direction. According to Martyn Cornell** it was produced by United Glass (Ravenhead) in the UK and designed by the prolific Alexander Hardie Williamson who is reputed to have designed in the region of 1,700 glasses for both domestic and bar use during his 27 years at the company.

But as ever with anything to do with Irish beer history, things are not quite as simple as they appear. In fact there are at least 3 different beer tankard designs in this style, albeit with quite subtle differences.

The original tankard appears to have been heavily influenced by those robust, conical pint tumblers made in moulds (as were the Harp tankards) from either side of 1900 that were still being made and in use up to the 1940s. These tumblers had fluted grooves very reminiscent of Williamson’s design and on some those grooves alternated in height just like the first iteration of the Harp glassware, plus both had thick bases and a robust feel. These early Harp tankards have a pint-to-line mark around the rim and carry both UK and Irish verification marks as to volume, although the Irish mark does not mention pint-to-line but the UK version does. There is a degree of variation of logo on these glasses too, with some carrying the words Keg Harp in one line with a crowned HL between the words, while other examples have the words in separate lines with the word Harp in gold lettering with a blue outline. Yet another variant in lettering has the words reversed to read Harp Keg with the latter word now in Gold in a stencil-like font (The earliest advertisements use this glass and lettering although with the words the 'correct' way around.) Oversized half-pint versions were also made, and that Head space in both sizes might be a nod to the beers German origins and the Teutonic frothy pour as in seen in many an Oktoberfest image. Although, there is also some reporting*** that the kegged product was quite frothy in the early days so this might have been a way of overcoming the issue and not leaving the customer with too short a serve and angry encounters with the bar person!

The next evolution of the design sees a similar volume of oversized pint but now the fluted grooves are all the same height and have reduced in number from 21 to 20, with one missing on the opposite side of the glass to the handle, on the mould line. The words Keg Harp are also now just in blue, with a slight font change, if not a new typeface. The handle remains the same, as does the general heftiness of the tankard, with both this and the previous version being very slightly wider in diameter at the base.

The final, and last version of this sixties and seventies period has the tankard reduced in volume, but not height, to an actual pint (although the half-pints with line, seem to remain at over a half pint even in this version). It has 20 grooves still, although they are more pronounced, but the handle has been changed from a round cross-section to a more squarish shape and starts lower down the body, which is now evenly cylindrical from top to bottom. The logo appears the same as the previous version and this tankard was also available with the words ‘Harp Lager' when the marketing moved away from the use of the word Keg in the seventies.

These changes are hard to track date-wise but based on verification stamps V1 seems to date from the mid to late sixties, V2 the very early seventies, and V3 from not long after, and this is the version that was probably in use up until the early eighties - although all could have been in use for long periods in different regions of these islands. There are very possibly other variations in design too as well as logo changes, and the glass colour appears to vary too from bluish to yellowish on different glasses. Whether any of these changes reflect different actual makers at different periods, or whether Williamson was involved in any tweaks is unclear, but the changes are certainly there, albeit only important and noticeable to those beset with a particular level of pedantry.

It should be noted that there are examples of late sixties verified dimple tankards which were also used for Harp, and a new version of the Harp tankard - although squatter and more unwieldly - was launched around the mid-nineties. It was made by the Dema glass company but it didn’t quite catch on and appears to have mostly been used for promotional giveaways.

-o-

Keg Harp, or Draught Harp, or Harp Lager was certainly a hugely important line for Guinness up until the eighties and early nineties when foreign lager brands, due to media exposure and changing consumer tastes, began to exert their dominance on the bar counter. Ironically many were brewed by Irish based breweries anyway, including by Guinness. Harp - the brand - seems to have just slowly backed out of the war, and at this point in time just sits in pint bottles in the odd bar, and only occasionally appears on those counters it once warred on and dominated ... like a few Irish beer brands it's now brewed in Dublin, and appears to have lost its fight, direction and momentum.

For now at least ...

Liam K

*For more history on Harp see Boak & Bailey’s write-up here.

** Martyn Cornell's post where he references the Harp tankard is here.

***  The Guinness Book of Guinness, compiled by Edward Guinness

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 source, and a link back to this post. The items featured are from the author's own collection. All sources, not mentioned, are available on request. DO NOT STEAL THIS CONTENT!

A Shot of Beer History #5 - Tankard Theft

In May 1913 the following report appeared in a Dublin newspaper as a warning to the city's publicans:

It is now some time ago since the licensed trade suffered great loss by the disappearance of pewter tankards, and now the tankard thieves have again made their appearance. They re-started on the North side of the city on Wednesday, and confined their unwelcome attentions to Upper Dorset street. The modus operandi is as follows:- Generally a man and a woman enter the "snug." the man calls for a tankard of porter, and the woman a bottle of stout. They occupy the "snug" for some time, and then leave, the woman having hid away the empty tankard, and leaving a pint tumbler in its place, the assistant in his rush forgetting, when he sees the two glasses, that he supplied a tankard.

The tankards are melted down along with the tops of soda water syphons and made into counterfeit coin, which is generally freely circulated after a tankard raid. the coins are very neatly turned out, and have a very good ring, but the bright colour will be detected if closely examined.

As alluded to in the report, this was a relatively common practice but it is interesting to see the 'modus operandi' here in print. So, it appears that the theft of drinkware from pubs isn't a new phenomena - not that we really thought it was - although the reasons for said theft appears to have changed through the years to one of collecting.  Although there is no mention of where the ladies mentioned in the report hid their soon-to-be-swapped tumblers and stolen tankards, it is possible they were tucked neatly into the folds of a dress but it is probably more likely a bag of some description was used. Anecdotally, that practice still exists, with glassware generally disappearing into a handbag these days - often at the gentleman's prompting - but without the switcheroo. (That's not to say that women don't steal glassware for their own use of course!)

It's 'nice' to see that there is equality and partnership when it comes to this exercise, although it must also be said that then - as like now - the gentleman can have plausible deniability as to the theft, as the stolen item is in the possession of the lady, and therefore perhaps the alliance is not quite what it seems ..?!

Liam K

PS. Don't steal stuff from pubs!

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. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive, who have kindly let me share the above image from The Freeman's Journal of the 16th May 1913. DO NOT STEAL THIS CONTENT!

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.