page_title: Bass Brewery
section_title: Branding
hierarchical_section_title: Bass Brewery / Branding
context_page_description: The Bass Brewery was founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England. The main brand was Bass Pale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK. By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels. Its pale ale was exported throughout the British Empire, and the company's distinctive red triangle became the UK's first registered trade mark.
  Bass took control of a number of other large breweries in the early 20th century, and in the 1960s merged with Charrington United Breweries to become the largest UK brewing company, Bass Charrington. The brewing operations of the company were bought by Interbrew in 2000, while the retail side were renamed Six Continents plc. The UK government's Competition Commission was concerned about the monopoly implications arising from the deal, and instructed Interbrew to dispose of the brewery and certain brands to Coors, but allowed Interbrew to retain the rights to the Bass Pale Ale brand. In 2010, it was widely reported that AB-InBev are attempting to sell the rights to the Bass brand in the UK for around £10 million to £15 million.
context_section_description: Bass was a pioneer in international brand marketing. "Many years before 1855" Bass applied a red triangle to casks of its Pale Ale. After 1855 the triangles were red, white or blue depending on which of three breweries it came from, but all bottles of Pale Ale had the red triangle from that date. The blue triangle was briefly revived after World War II for Pale Ale that wasn't bottle conditioned. The Bass Red Triangle was the first trade mark to be registered under the UK's Trade Marks Registration Act 1875. The Act came into effect on 1 January 1876 and legend has it that a Bass employee queued overnight outside the registrar's office on New Year's Eve in order to be the first in line to register a trade mark the next morning. As a result, Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton Limited received the first two registrations, the Bass Red Triangle for their pale ale and the Bass Red Diamond next for their strong ale. The trade marks are now owned by Brandbrew SA, an InBev subsidiary based in Luxembourg. In June 2013 InBev renamed Bass Pale Ale as Bass Trademark No.1.
  Bottles of Bass with the Red Triangle logo have occasionally appeared in art and literature, including Édouard Manet's 1882 painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and in over 40 paintings by Picasso, mostly at the height of his Cubist period around 1914. In the "Oxen of the Sun" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, Bloom observes the Bass logo.
caption: Bottles of Bass on the bar in Manet's 1882 A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
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