{"id":29060,"date":"2025-12-22T16:30:58","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T16:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=29060"},"modified":"2025-12-23T00:01:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T00:01:29","slug":"harry-clarkes-elixirs-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2025\/12\/22\/harry-clarkes-elixirs-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Clarke’s Elixirs of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A magazine ad.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of all the books illustrated by Harry Clarke the most scarce are a pair of slim volumes published 100 years ago by the Jameson distillery to promote their brand of Irish whiskey. The books were never widely distributed, being given away to distillery visitors. Copies of the illustrations were still hard to find in 2011 when I wrote a brief post about them. Collections of Clarke’s work seldom pay the books much attention beyond reproducing one or two drawings but by trawling the auction houses it’s now possible to accumulate most of the illustrations. With the ongoing interest in Clarke’s work I keep expecting Jameson to publish facsimile reprints but so far this doesn’t seem to have happened. The information below is taken from Harry Clarke: His Graphic Art<\/em> (1983) by Nicola Gordon Bowe. A couple more illustrations from The History of a Great House<\/em> may be found in Hiroshi Unno’s exceptional study, Harry Clarke \u2013 An Imaginative Genius in Illustrations and Stained-glass Arts<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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The History of a Great House \u2014 Origin of John Jameson Whiskey, containing some Interesting Observations thereon together with the Causes of Its Present Scarcity<\/em><\/strong>. Printed by Maunsel and Roberts Ltd, Dublin 1924 for the distillers; 24 pp, 8 x 4.75 inches, 21 black line drawings blocked in with viridian, one repeated as an endpiece, custard paper cover (8 x 5 inches), printed with additional black and viridian drawing.<\/p>\n

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Elixir of Life (Uisge Beatha) \u2014 Being a Slight Account of the Romantic Rise to Fame of a Great House<\/em><\/strong>, by Geoffrey C. Warren. Printed for the distillers by Goodridge Ltd., Dublin 1925; designed by Ashley Havindon; 28 pp, 6 x 4.5 inches, bound in black cloth, bound in green paper-covered boards, title device by Ashley Havindon mounted on front cover, 9 black pen and ink drawings by Harry Clarke, blocked in with yellow.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022\u00a0The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Fire in the Blood: Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s illustrated Swinburne<\/a>
\n\u2022 More Harry Clarke online<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke online<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke record covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Thomas Bodkin on Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke: His Graphic Art<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke and others in The Studio<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke in colour<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Tinderbox<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke and the Elixir of Life<\/a>
\n\u2022 Cardwell Higgins versus Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Modern book illustrators, 1914<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s stained glass<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s The Year\u2019s at the Spring<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Harry Clarke, 1889\u20131931<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A magazine ad. Of all the books illustrated by Harry Clarke the most scarce are a pair of slim volumes published 100 years ago by the Jameson distillery to promote their brand of Irish whiskey. The books were never widely distributed, being given away to distillery visitors. Copies of the illustrations were still hard to … Continue reading “Harry Clarke’s Elixirs of Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Harry Clarke's Elixirs of Life","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,42,48],"tags":[14341,99,14342,568],"class_list":["post-29060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-illustrators","tag-geoffrey-c-warren","tag-harry-clarke","tag-hiroshi-unno","tag-nicola-gordon-bowe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7yI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}