Woven into the very fabric of our humble green isle, Guinness is not just a drink, not just a brand, but a part of what it means to be Irish. Totally Dublin caught up with Eibhlín Colgan, archive manager of the Guinness Storehouse, to chat about the Guinness archives, the legacy of the brand and their recent expedition to the Arctic Circle.
Starting out her career in London, Eibhlín Colgan moved to the Guinness Storehouse when the archives were established in the 1990s, and has been with Guinness for 25 years – her entire career. “I have a background in history, like many archivists. I fell into this role after doing work experience with Guinness in London when we brewed there,” Eibhlín tells us. “It was an incredible experience living on the brewery site in the brewery residence. The archive opened here alongside the development of the Storehouse and I’m the second archivist to work here. I came in as a baby archivist and grew into the role of Guinness archivist!”
Since Arthur Guinness signed the famous 9,000-year lease in 1759, the Guinness Storehouse has been a treasure trove of records that now provide a detailed tapestry of Ireland’s rich historical landscape. Eibhlín is tasked with preserving and accurately recording these snippets of history, and these records come in all shapes and sizes. “We have always brewed on site since 1759,” she states, proudly. “We’ve brewed, built buildings to house the brewing production, employed people, distributed our beer, sold it to customers and in the 20th century we started advertising and marketing. The archive is the record of all that.”
With a wealth of paper materials, drawings and advertisements of all mediums, photographic, the walls of St. James’ Gate house the entire history of Guinness in Ireland making it one of the largest brand archive collections in Europe. “Our physical collection is incredibly extensive. My stat is that if I was to take folders and ledgers off shelves and stack them end-to-end, it would stretch about 7 km, so it’s 7000 linear metres,” Eibhlín reveals.
With the age of digital now in full swing, the role of an archivist has developed significantly over the years, and preservation is key to not only physical artefacts but to digital ones too. “All of our paper material is housed in acid-free folders in acid-free boxes, stored in a room that’s temperature controlled and humidity controlled that kind of basic preservation is very much part of what we do,” she explains.
Digital preservation certainly throws up a whole other ball game and is something many archivists are learning how to manage as technology progresses. “When I was in college there was no such thing as digital preservation. We can look at a document written 260 years ago and read it now, but can we read a word document that was written 10 years ago in an old version of word that maybe is stored on a floppy disc or a CD rom? It’s about making sure those formats can be read into the future.”
Although preserving material is a key element of being an archivist, a brand archivist’s role encompasses much more. Storytelling is an essential part of brand archiving, something Eibhlín says is possible by knowing the collections in depth. “An item isn’t an item on its own,” she explains. “If you look at our artwork, you’re not looking at it in isolation – that was part of a campaign. We ask ourselves what stories from our history will resonate with our visitors, we always try to create that original context. When you’re faced with collections the size that we have the challenge is how to put order on it. We break it down, and we take small elements of the collection at any one time and work through that.”
Guinness was often at the forefront of innovation and modernisation, and in the 1880s this contemporary way of working presented itself in the form of a pensions scheme for all employees. This meant the brewery’s records grew, as detailed information on employees were gathered. “We have an amazing collection of personnel records from when Guinness introduced the pension scheme. It was really radical at the time; it was about 30 years before the old age pension or the social State pension kicked in!” Eibhlín says with admiration. “In the 1880s in Ireland if you didn’t work, you had no income. If you worked in Guinness and had worked your 30 or 40 years, you retired on a full pension. If you passed away, that pension was passed on to any dependants.”
These records are highly sought after today, with people often getting in touch searching for family members. Something which Eibhlín finds a great privilege. “We have upwards of nearly 30,000 personnel files of people who worked in the brewery,” Eibhlín reveals. “On a daily basis we get queries from people to who are looking to trace their grandfathers or great grandfathers. It’s lovely and can be very emotional.”
With so much historical information having been destroyed in the Four Courts fire of 1922, some of the only written evidence of somebody existing in Ireland may be through the records at St. James’ Gate. If you are lucky enough to strike gold in the archives, you might find more than you were looking for. “A lot of the nature of working in Guinness was quite generational. So typically, if somebody contacts us and they’re looking to search their ancestors often they’re not just looking for one person. They might be looking for their great-grandfather, but also their great grand uncle and so on. The records are so detailed I could probably tell you what your great grandfather’s chest measurements were when he was 14 or even show you his handwriting.”
With a database available on the Guinness Storehouse website, if you are a direct family member in search of long-lost relatives, you can make an appointment with Eibhlín and her team for a more in-depth exploration of original material. “You get much more than the one line of a census entry,” Eibhlín explains. “You can get where they went to school, their previous employment, letters of recommendation, information on where people would have lived throughout the years. We’re the only private corporate archive open to the public.”
With Guinness advertising famous the world over, and Hollywood stars like Jason Momoa and Michael Fassbender featuring in campaigns, the advertising has become an entity in and of itself, but it wasn’t always part of the brand.
“Guinness was founded in 1759, and it wasn’t until 170 years later in 1929 that Guinness advertised for the first time, which is crazy!” Eibhlín reveals. “It became the largest brewery in the world with no advertising whatsoever, there was just no need. There’s a line in the centre of the very first ad from February 1929 that states ‘as the result of quality and quality alone, the Guinness brewery has grown to be by far the largest in the world.’”
In the late 1920s as the world gave way to the rise of marketing and advertising, Guinness got into the game and became the front runner we all now know and love. With the artist John Gilroy at the helm, the inimitable Guinness toucan was born. “He was trying to come up with an advertising campaign and went to the circus one day, where he saw a sea lion balancing a ball on the end of his nose. He thought to himself ‘wouldn’t it be cool and quirky if he was intelligent enough to balance a glass of Guinness.’ He goes back to his studio and draws the sea lion and then went on to create a menagerie of animals, including the toucan,” Eibhlín explains.
Despite the fact that there are actually no more images of the toucan than any other animals, the cheeky bird was the one that captured the public’s hearts. “These images would have been on billboards in London. It was a grey, smog filled place at the time. There was no colour television, no David Attenborough beaming into your sitting room. And I think this colourful, exotic bird, with a twinkle in his eye beaming down just really caught the public’s imagination,” Eibhlín explains buoyantly. “The toucan was first created in 1935, so he’s 91 years old. And he keeps he keeps coming out every decade, he’s never gone away.”
Alongside advertising, collaboration is now a pivotal nook of the Guinness brand. With knitwear, workwear and sportswear just some of the areas of expansion, Eibhlín and her archive team ensure the history of Guinness is intertwined always. “We’ve done two collaborations with the JW Anderson team and that’s been just fantastic,” Eibhlín tells us. “I hosted the design team here in the Storehouse and pulled out some original advertising images for them. In the first range the images on the jumpers were taken directly from 1930 advertising. In the more recent collection, there’s one beautiful white shirt that has a poem taken from a 1940s press ad hand stitched into the back.”
With such rich archival materials at their fingertips, Eibhlín and her colleagues were given an opportunity to solidify their position as one of the most influential and culturally significant brands globally, with a recent trip to the Arctic World Archives. “A team of us went over. Myself, Tabitha who runs our PR and then Steve Gilson who’s our global head of quality,” she tells us gleefully.
The Arctic World Archive was established by a Norwegian company, with the intent of creating and laying down the cultural record of our humanity for the future. Akin to the Global Seed Vault – a backup facility for the world’s crop that ensures the safety of food supply. “The premise was that if we were doing this for something physical like seeds, that we should be securing something as ethereal as our world’s cultural heritage. Social connection and history are part of what makes Guinness as a brand so distinct. We felt that we would love our history to be laid down alongside records from say the Vatican archives and Dante’s Divine Comedy. It was an incredibly experience and a huge highlight in my tenure here,” she beams.
Travelling to Svalbard, a remote archipelago off the northern coast of Norway, a mere 600 miles from the North Pole, Guinness were not only the first Irish brand, but also the first alcohol brand to deposit materials. “It’s an hour and 40 minutes by plane from the top of Norway. The first thing I saw when I got off the plane was a warning sign for polar bears – apparently there’s more polar bears than people on the island!” she says in disbelief. “The vaults are both there because it’s so remote and from a preservation perspective the permafrost provides a stable temperature.”
Not only this, but Svalbard has its own government infrastructure, which means militarisation is forbidden there, safety and preservation are paramount. In February of this year, Guinness laid down material that will last through the ages. “I curated an extensive collection of material relating to our beer, our brands and importantly our people,” Eibhlín recounts.
“I laid down a copy of our 9000-year lease, the foundational document of the brewery. I put in a copy of the first use of our Guinness harp as our global trademark. Copies of our advertising over the years, material relating to our brand homes – like the Storehouse celebrating its 25th anniversary, and our current campaign ‘Pints of You’.”
The material is put digitally onto a piece of film that can withstand the permafrost for 1000 years, so Eibhlín carefully chose several items to accurately reflect the workings of Guinness brewing throughout the ages. “I put in examples from Arthur Guinness’ original recipes books, dating back to the late 1790s, as well as some our patents for our technologies. Guinness draught – that creamy pint we all know and love, which was developed in the 1950s, right up to the Nitrosurge we have today. I wanted to ensure we kept the collections up to date and representative of the whole 260 years. I also put in genetics studies on our yeast and material on our barley, which happens to coincide with some of the barley in the Global Seed Vault!”
The rich database of personnel files from employees through the ages, and an extensive trade ledger were also included in the collection. “The trade ledger shows all the Guinness labels that were produced by pubs over the years. Guinness people are not just the people who directly worked for Guinness, but the people who sold Guinness and the broader Guinness community,” she informs us. “We also laid down material reflecting the Guinness family in Dublin 8 over the years. And Steve Gilson got to pour the most northerly pint of Guinness using Nitrosurge and Nitrodraught on Svalbard!”
With the history of Guinness safely resting in the Arctic, the 9,000-year lease, Gilroy’s artwork and the history of many of our forefathers, Guinness’ legacy will endure. Much like how it has done throughout Dublin for the last 267 years. “Guinness was more than just creating employment, it was about creating communities,” Eibhlín reflects. “That was very much part of the legacy of Guinness here in the Liberties. That legacy is generational and is very much part of the Guinness footprint and is in the social fabric of this part of the city.”
Words: Rebecca Reilly
Photos: Killian Broderick
