#220: The Golden Syrup
Something so familiar and so unchanged
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a tin of golden syrup will cause chaos in the kitchen. Its surface will not stay shiny and smooth, but will become covered in glistening gloop. This gloop will not stay on the can; it will drip onto your surfaces and stick to your spoons. The culprit will enter your cupboards. It will sit in the corner, its sticky rim congealing.
Apparently, google says the trick to stopping this syrupy mess is to keep the rim of the tin clean; to spoon out your syrup instead of pour. Yet this is the method I used this afternoon and I still have syrup stuck atop the tin.
This predicament and the golden syrup tin itself feels homely and familiar to me, and I imagine to many other British households too. It is pulled out on pancake day or for flapjack-making, and the same golden lion greets me every time.
Considering how many big brands shift their logos to keep up with the times — many logos are currently in a minimalist, stripped-back version of their original form — the Lyle’s Golden Syrup stands out as sticking to tradition.
But look more closely at this sleeping lion, and you will notice he is in fact dead. And there are bees coming out of him. There’s clearly nothing like a dead animal to entice you to buy some syrupy goodness.
The logo is in fact a demonstration of Abram Lyle’s own views. It is a public expression of the person behind the brand. According to the Lyle’s website:
“Lyle had strong religious beliefs, which is why the tin’s famous logo depicts strongman Samson’s ‘lion and bees’ from the Bible’s Old Testament, registered as Lyle’s trademark. ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’, as the quote goes; where bees produce honey inside the lion’s carcass, rich syrup pours from the well-loved tin… And the logo and design remain unchanged to this day (along with the delicious contents, of course).”
So what about that sweetness inside? It may be gloopy and messy and get all over the place, but it also has a particular glisten, a way of settling like a glass window, that you can easily get lost inside.
This shining syrup reminds me of Jacob Polley’s poem, ‘A Jar of Honey’.
“You hold it like a lit bulb,
a pound of light,
and swivel the stunned glow
around the fat glass sides […]”
And I wish, like Polley, I could manage to capture something as mundanely beautiful as this tin of syrup. To construct a tribute out of words to the everyday. Because this is what mine and Katie’s blog does. Like Polley, we hold our objects up to the light, and we hope we can show you them as we see them.
