Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog
While at home for Christmas, Bailey took the opportunity to raid his parents photo archive (an ancient Tesco carrier bag) for pictures from their time running the Artillery Inn, Exeter, between 1981-84.
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.
The invaluable and labyrinthine Internet Archive (archive.org) recently made available millions of public domain images from old books, searchable by keyword, on Flickr.com.
This gallery comes from a 1902 book called Ireland: industrial and agricultural which has a substantial section on brewing in Ireland.
(We’ve tidied the images up a bit and flipped them all the right way round.)
Featured image: David Bruce outside the Flounder & Firkin, Islington, in the early 1980s. (SOURCE: David Bruce.)
We’ve also thrown in a colour version of the Brahms & Liszt beer label which appears in black-and-white in the book.
With thanks to John Keeble, Brian Schwartz, Martin Sykes, David Bruce, Christian Townsley & John Gyngell and Simon Webster.