Guinness Tortoise Metal Sign

Make your home bar special by adding a touch of one of the most loved beers in the world, Guinness. This metal sign will enhance your home bar walls with the iconic Gilroy designed "Tortoise" artwork.

Gilroy Animals

Tortoise: 1936. The first poster showed a speeding tortoise bearing a GUINNESS®. The caption - "Have a Guinness when you're tired" - echoes the restorative and tonic values traditionally associated with GUINNESS® in early advertising as encapsulated in the original slogan - "Guinness is good for you". In the humorous illustrated booklet, which Guinness produced for Christmas 1937, the tortoise appeared with the following poem containing a characteristic rhyming pun: " "It's Christmas," said the tortoise, "Have something good for you." So Guinness he has brought us, And Tortoise what to do."

John Gilroy

John Gilroy, (1898-1985) was one of the 20th century's most versatile, gifted and imaginative artists. He is best known for producing some of the most memorable and attractive images in British advertising, but was also a respected and successful landscape and portrait painter of royalty and celebrities. After producing several successful poster designs, Gilroy was recruited in 1925 by the advertising agency S.H.Benson's who handled the accounts of many well-known national brands including Wills Gold Flake, Coleman's mustard, Macleans toothpaste and Bovril. In 1928 Benson's began work on the first advertising campaign for GUINNESS® beer and from then until the early 1960s Gilroy was above all associated with advertising GUINNESS®. Gilroy is particularly associated with two campaigns for GUINNESS®, which ran simultaneously for nearly thirty years from the 1930s. The first involved the slogan "Guinness for strength" showing people performing incredible feats of strength empowered by GUINNESS®. The most popular posters in this series were the "Girder"(1934) depicting a workman effortlessly carrying a massive girder on his head and the horse and cart with the farmer pulling the cart (1949). The second campaign, featured zoo-animals. At the time Benson's had been trying unsuccessfully to develop a human "Guinness family" for its advertising. The idea of using animals to advertise GUINNESS® occurred to Gilroy after visiting the circus. While watching a performing sea-lion he entertained the curious thought that the animal would be smart enough to balance a glass of GUINNESS® on its nose! It became the concept for one of the world's longest running advertising campaigns "My Goodness, MY GUINNESS”. The hapless zookeeper, a caricature of Gilroy himself, watched over the family of animals which included an ostrich swallowing a GUINNESS®, glass and all, a pelican with a beak full of bottles, a tortoise, a lion, bear, crocodile, kangaroo, giraffe, polar bear, gnu, kinkajou, penguin (particularly associated with Draught GUINNESS® to emphasise its coolness) and, of course, most famous of all, the toucan. All of the zoo animals appeared together for the first time in 1953 with a poster designed to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. In the 1930s Guinness "adopted" the characters from Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books and Gilroy illustrated several parodies of the Mad Hatter's teaparty, the Walrus and the Carpenter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, etc. These were used as Underground posters, as magazine ads and in a series of illustrated booklets of nonsense rhymes Guinness sent out to its friends in the medical profession each Christmas (hence their name "doctors' books"). During the Second World War Gilroy continued working on advertisements for GUINNESS®. Posters depicted a sealion offering a GUINNESS® to a zookeeper in battledress and a sailor escaping with his comrade's GUINNESS® aboard a torpedo. Due to the paper shortage, some posters were printed on the back of existing ones - this is why a Gilroy kangaroo poster in 1943 had a very dark background. The last major Gilroy poster was 1961 showing the animals at the seaside. Besides various different sized posters, they had graced hundreds of press ads and advertising miscellanea including ceramic models and table lamps in the late 1950s-early 1960s. Mid 1950s cinema commercials involved puppet animations of Gilroy's posters while the earliest television commercials for GUINNESS® used live or cartoon versions in the same way. Besides advertising Gilroy also produced for Guinness some of the early covers of the Guinness company magazine, painted a series of pictures of brewery scenes and portraits of members of the Guinness family. Gilroy actually described himself as a portrait painter, rather than a commercial artist, and throughout his career was in great demand. He painted all the main members of the Royal Family, Sir Winston Churchill, Edward Heath, Lords Mountbatten and Alexander of Tunis, Pope John XX111, Sir John Gielgud and many other celebrities. A most prolific artist, Gilroy also produced a vast number of sketches, landscapes and whimsical designs for Royle's greetings cards.

• We ship in the Island of Ireland only

• Standard delivery

• Tracked shipment

• 4-5 working day delivery

• 1-2 days dispatch (subject to change)

Once your order is ready to be dispatched, you are going to receive a confirmation email with UPS tracking number

YOU CAN PICK UP YOUR ORDER ONLY AFTER THE "READY TO PICK UP" NOTIFICATION IS SENT TO YOU

You can collect your order at our  Click & Collect location in the Guinness Storehouse Retail Store located on the ground floor 

1 Shop online: simply add the items to your shopping cart, choose "Pick up" as a delivery method and proceed to checkout as normal 

2 Get Confirmation: You will be sent a Ready to Collect email to confirm your order is ready for collection

3  Collect: You can collect your order at the Engraving Station by the till area in the Retail Store on the Ground Floor. You will need to bring your Order Confirmation email (either printed or on a phone/tablet).When you arrive at the Guinness Storehouse, show your confirmation email to the team at the front door. From here you will be directed to the Store. Once inside take the escalator to the atrium on the Ground Floor and turn left into the Store. The Engraving Station is on the Mezzanine floor of the Retail Store.Provide your name and confirmation email to a member of staff at the engraving station.Your package will be given to you here and you can then feel free to have a look around the Store

 Car Park

There is free parking at our visitor car park next to the old Hopstore on Crane Street. Our visitor car park is 4 minutes walking distance from the Guinness Storehouse

The Guinness Storehouse team make sure that all the products listed on our website are in perfect condition before fulfilling your order. However we do understand you may change your mind or there may be an issue in transit with your purchase so we are providing a “Return Label” with all our shipments. To make a return, please keep in mind the following:

• You must provide proof of purchase for example, a receipt and/or order number.
• Once you have completed your return, you are responsible for keeping note of your tracking number.
• Products must be returned within 30 days of your virtual experience. 
• Products must be unworn, unused and unwashed with all tags attached.

If you need any further assistance please contact us atinfo@guinnessstorehouse.com, we will do the best we can to respond to your queries.Please note: Due to the current restrictions relating to Covid-19, in some instances it is taking 7+ days to receive and process your return. We appreciate your patience during this time!Refund & Replacement - Damaged of Defective ItemIf any items of your kit arrives damaged or defective please contact us as we are more than happy to help with sending you a replacement. Please contact us atinfo@guinnessstorehouse.comwith the following:

• Your order number in the subject with your shipping information included in the email
• The reason for a refund or replacement
• Please provide a photo of the defective or damaged item in original packaging

Our team will then contact you with the next steps in order to receive a refund or a replacement.Please note: Refunds will be applied to the defective or damaged goods only, including shipment charge. If opted for a replacement, we will deliver to you a brand new item and the shipping costs will be covered by us!