Background
Warrick was born and raised in Londonderry, Ohio, where his family had a dairy farm.
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Harley E. Warrick
Edit ProfileCareer
Over his 55-year career, Warrick painted or retouched over 20,000 Mail Pouch signs. When he retired, he was the last of the Mail Pouch sign painters in America. The Mail Pouch signs have become iconic and some of Harley Warrick"s work has been exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution.
Though he was not the first or the only Mail Pouch barn painter, he was the most prolific and famous.
When he returned from service in World World War II in 1946, he began painting his family"s dairy barn with a team of Mail Pouch sign painters. They suggested he join them.
Upon reflection, Warrick decided that it would be better than milking his family"s Jersey cows each day so he began painting with the team Having just returned from the Army, Warrick had no other clothes and so he painted barns for the first week in his uniform.
lieutenant turned out to be the only job he would ever have.
Warrick and a partner traveled from town to town, sometimes sleeping in the back of a pickup truck or cheap motel. They would often be on the road for months at a time. With the partner painting the black background and Warrick painting the letters, they were able to paint two barns a day, taking about six hours per barn.
Warrick painted signs in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, New York, Illinois, and Michigan.
Warrick used no template or tools, painting the sides of barns entirely by eye. He would start with the letter "East" in "CHEW" and then add the "West" and then "Companies of Honour".
He once said that he always started with the "H", "East", and "West" as those represented his initials. Harley would sometimes deliberately misspell words to see how many phone calls the tobacco company would get about lieutenant
He had said that once in a while he"d put three "C"s in "TOBACCO" just to see if anyone noticed.
The Highway Beautification Acting of 1965, which prohibited advertising billboards within 660 feet (200 m) of an interstate highway, effectively ended the era of painting the sides of barns for advertising. Though nearly all other sign painters went out of business, Warrick continued to work for the Swisher International Group, owner of Mail Pouch Tobacco, painting barns along lesser roads and highways until his retirement in 1991. When the Mail Pouch signs were designated as National Landmarks, they were exempted from regulations against tobacco advertising and Warrick continued to paint.
Not until Warrick"s retirement did Mail Pouch suspend the barn painting advertising campaign.
Warrick is cited as an influence on Scott Hagan, who is noted for his barn paintings for the Ohio Bicentennial.
