Vintage Poster Archives
Guinness Extra Stout 1958 | Encore, Victoria Davidson
Guinness Extra Stout 1958 | Encore, Victoria Davidson
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A young woman in a full crimson ballgown kneels on a gilded footstool, reaching up to pluck the harp strings on a Guinness Extra Stout label. The bottle is enormous beside her, the loose navy brushscript headline above her reads: Encore! A half-pint glass of stout sits on its own small plinth to her left. Flat cream ground, bold red, dark brown, a teal flash at the shoes, a vintage beer poster that lands its single visual joke with complete economy.
Illustrated by Victoria Davidson (1915–1999), born in Munich and later a British citizen who signed her commercial work simply 'Victoria'. Davidson freelanced across two decades for Picture Post, Lilliput, the Radio Times, and the Illustrated London News, while producing advertising commissions for London Transport, the GPO, and Guinness. The poster was printed by Mils and Rockeye Production Ltd. of Ipswich, placing it in the late 1950s, when Guinness advertising consistently used warm humour and graphic restraint together.
Davidson's illustration style here is characteristic of the period's best British commercial work: rounded and warm, animated without sentimentality, the composition carried by flat colour and a single witty premise. The oversized bottle, a common Guinness visual device of the era, becomes a prop worthy of an encore.
Reproduced from archival source material as a fine art print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. A considered addition to any collection of mid-century British graphic design or Guinness advertising heritage.
