English: Poster for Bovril, about 1900 V&A Museum no. E. 163-1973

Techniques - Colour lithograph, inks on paper
Place - Great Britain
Dimensions - height 114 cm, width 76 cm
Object Type - This poster is a colour lithograph, made by printing from a flat surface (traditionally stone, now often a metal plate), on which the artist draws or paints the original design with a greasy substance like chalk. The surface is next prepared, moistened and inked; the greasy printing ink adheres to the design, which is then printed onto a sheet of paper. To make a colour lithograph, a separate printing surface is required for each colour.
Subjects Depicted - Humour was one of the keys to success in the early marketing campaigns for the beef extract Bovril. In this poster it is a play on words, as the bull puts its head out of the carriage window to enquire if it is `right for Bovril'. Another well-known poster showed a bull looking at a jar of Bovril with the slogan 'Alas! My poor brother'.

Trading - The name Bovril is derived from two words: bos, Latin for 'bull' or 'ox', and vril, a fictional word for an energising juice in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel The Coming Race (1871). Sales of Bovril were first recorded in Britain in 1886, at the Colonial and Continental Exhibition at South Kensington. But when Samuel Herbert Benson - a former employee of Bovril Ltd - took over as the firm's advertising agent in the 1890s, business started to boom. His poster strategy, with designers working in close collaboration with copywriters, made Bovril a household name.