The Victorian style gentlemen’s club, The Pegu Club, was founded in 1871 in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) during the British colonial era. Thanks to the fast rise in members they soon outgrew their original clubhouse and in 1882 they moved to their current location, a compound with several houses and gardens. The club was named after the Pegu river and was the home away from home for British officers, officials, businessmen and the likes staking a colonial claim to Burma.

The signature cocktail, bearing the name of the club, was probably created in the early 1900s. It is essentially a gin sour without egg white and with the unusual addition of two types of bitters. Whenever it was created, the cocktail had made it across the globe in 1922 when it was published in Harry MacElhone’s “Harry of Ciro’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails”. Eight years later, in 1930, Harry Craddock writes in his “Savoy Cocktail Book” that the Pegu Cocktail “has travelled, and is asked for, around the world.” In other words, it spread remarkably fast for the time. Maybe partially thanks to the fact that journalists and authors frequented the Pegu Club when in Rangoon. Rudyard Kipling, for instance, visited the Pegu Club in 1889 as a young newspaperman.

After being all but forgotten the Pegu Club Cocktail was returned to its former place among its cocktail peers in 2005 thanks to Audrey Saunders, who opened a bar called Pegu Club in New York. Her mission was to reintroduce classic gin-based cocktails to the city, at a time when vodka was dominating the New York bar scene.

After many years of disrepair the government decided to return the Pegu Club to its former glory and the buildings an gardens are now a Myanmar heritage site.

The cocktail glass called Embassy was designed in 1939 by the American designer, architect, illustrator, graphic designer and writer Walter Dorwin Teague.

Product information

This is one in a series of illustrations of classic cocktail recipes with a selection of the most beautifully designed glasses.

The size 40x50 cm (approx 16x20”) are signed and printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310g archival paper and are sold in a limited edition of 50 prints.

The size 30x40 cm (approx 12x16”) are printed on Hahnemühle Fine Art Studio Enhanced 210g archival paper.