Guinness® Collectors Club

There can be no other Brewer of beer in the world who can exhibit the amazing range and diversity of bottle labels that GUINNESS can. With essentially one product type - stout, which comes in three main styles (Extra Stout, Export Stout and Foreign Extra Stout), there has been a bewildering array of labels issued and on the British mainland the product was widely distributed and sold. GUINNESS had a policy of not bottling their own beer and authorised an amazing number of Brewers, Bottlers, Liquor Merchants, Traders, Grocers, Hoteliers and Publicans to do it for them. Each used it's own label. Very often the bottler used their own design of label and because of the methodical record keeping and archiving of Brewers such as GUINNESS and the collecting activity of Labologists who have researched and preserved collections, we can see from the label record a fascinating glimpse of the early beer retail trade history.

Collectors of beer labels have long found GUINNESS to be a fascinating but difficult brewer to understand. The complexity of what has been issued has long confused those interested in brewery history but we hope the following sections will go some way to helping you understand this wonderful subject.

GUINNESS themselves sought to simplify the issue of foreign labels when they ceased printing and issuing from Dublin. However the current situation is now not less but more complicated with labels being produced in Dublin for Ireland, Park Royal for the UK, Runcorn for export and in many of the overseas countries where the beer is brewed under license.

GUINNESS was one of the earliest users of paper labels on glass bottles with small round white examples known to be in use from the 1840's.

When the registration of trademarks started in 1862 GUINNESS was one of the first labels to be registered. The well known buff oval label with the Irish harp device and the number in the center over the wavy lines became a familiar design which has survived well into the late twentieth century despite occasional lapses into "modernism". This protected label was issued to bottlers for their use and the bottlers name was overprinted on the GUINNESS label in the space provided. From 1862 both bottlers own design and GUINNESS Trademark labels were in circulation. This situation existed both in the UK, Irish and export markets up until 1953. Because of these bottling arrangements, literally thousands of different GUINNESS labels exist.

GUINNESS has changed the design of their TM label many times over the years both in the home and overseas markets. More changes have taken place in the last 20 years than in the previous 130 years. Nearly every market on the world where GUINNESS is on sale now has it's own distinctive label. Many bottles have front, back and neck labels to make the situation more complicated. Although there is a different design of label used in the Irish and UK markets, which has been the case since 1953, all bottlers in those home markets use the same label.

This is not the case overseas where beer can be either bottled by GUINNESS Exports Ltd, Runcorn for export, brewed locally overseas or is a blend of local beer (sometimes even lager) and a GUINNESS blending ingredient to turn it into GUINNESS Stout. Very often the labels are completely different depending on how it is brewed.

In it's long history there have been hundreds of special brewings and bottlings, each marked with a commemorative label. Promotions and advertising themes now appear on the bottle label. Product tests, new product launches, label design trials and changes in packaging legislation have all led to a myriad of different variants on a theme - GUINNESS Stout. Every time a country introduces a new beer labelling requirement a new label has to be produced.

It is in the overseas markets where the complexity and variations of labels becomes most obvious. The early independent export bottlers own designs were wonderfully colourful and eccentric, examples of which can be viewed in the Export Bottlers section. One bottler of GUINNESS from Liverpool, J.P. O'Brien used over thirty different brands and label designs in the late 1890's. At the turn of the century some export GUINNESS bottles carried four different labels denoting the Agent, Bottler, GUINNESS the Brewer and another bottlers caution label, which served to warn the drinker of forgeries.

Some 43 different export bottlers and traders have been recruited by GUINNESS to sell their beer around the world. Hundreds of label designs have survived in the records and some ancient trademarks still survive today because they became the mark by which the beer was known and ordered. Hence the use in Florida of the Dog's Head and in Puerto Rico of the Bull Dog. The most common area to retain these old caricatures is South East Asia. The Wolf's Head, the Cat and the Bull Dog are all on sale today in Indonesia. Malaysia uses the Dog's Head on the neck labels. The GUINNESS Dog's Head brand was and still is known to the drinker as Dog's Head Stout.

The Guinness Collectors Club is fortunate to be able to call upon a specialist in the field of GUINNESS labels who is only too pleased to answer any of your questions. You may also have in your own collection a label which you believe to be unique and he would be most grateful to receive a photocopy of such. Please feel free to contact David Hughes.