Categories
design pubs

GALLERY: Bristol Style

Bristol is famous for its graffiti and street art with entire blocks and many businesses decorated, more or less elaborately, in the familiar spray-paint style.

We’ve found the way this applies to pubs particularly fascinating since arriving here permanently in the summer. We don’t know yet if we like it, as such but we do like that it seems to be a Bristol ‘thing’ — a real expression of local identity. It also seems to signal a certain laid-back informality that you might call Bohemian if that didn’t sound ludicrously 19th century.

We’re not sure of the etiquette of photographing and sharing other people’s creations but have tried to find credits where we can and link to the artist’s websites. At any rate, consider this an encouragement to go out and look at these pubs yourself, which are far more startling and unusual in the flesh.

"The Prince of Wales" (scrolll)
In the yard at the Prince of Wales, Bishopston.
"ALES"
Art in the gaps at the Prince of Wales.
"BUTCOMBE BREWERY".
Front of the Prince of Wales by Andrew Burns Colwill.
A giant painted beer pump.
Side of the Prince of Wales.
The Golden Lion, front.
The unfinished front of the Golden Lion, Bishopston.
Categories
Beer history

GALLERY: Manet Paints Beer

Artist Édouard Manet (1832-1883), a pioneer of impressionism, liked to paint Parisian street scenes, bars and cafés, and had a particular knack for capturing the look of light glinting from a cool glass of golden beer.

The frequency with which he depicted women drinking beer — positively chugging it — is also striking.

The gallery begins with a painting much over-used in books and articles about beer but which we couldn’t ignore. We’ve also pulled out a couple of interesting details for closer attention.

We referred to these pictures a lot while working on Gambrinus Waltz — it might have been the wrong city, but lager came to London via Paris, and the atmosphere of London’s lager beer saloons was similarly racy.

All of these images were taken from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain.