| Birth Name: | Burr Edwards Giffen |
| Birth Date: | 3 March 1886 |
| Birth Place: | Rockford, Illinois |
| Field: | Artist, Illustrator |
| Death Place: | Westchester County, New York |
| Style: | contemporary art |
| Spouse: | Bertha Tischler Giffen |
Burr E. Giffen (March 3, 1886 - April 2, 1965) was an American artist and illustrator[1] working in New York City. His most famous creation was while he was working for an Advertising Company in 1910. He created the Fisk Tire Company Boy holding a tire and night candle as a proposal sketch in charcoal. This sketch became the company's well-known registered trademarked image in 1910.[2]
Burr Giffen was born in Rockford, Illinois. When he reached the age of 4, he moved to Des Moines, Iowa where his father Marvin Q Giffen, was successful in the wholesale furniture business. Burr was noted without an occupation in the 1905 Iowa Census and soon left for New York City.[3]
In 1910, he was a fledgling working for an ad agency known as Wagner and Field. Giffen says he got the inspiration for the drawing at 3 A.M., sat down on his bed and rapidly sketched the little boy with a tire over his right shoulder and a candle held in his left hand. Simultaneously. he coined the slogan: "Time to Re-tire."[4]
The sketch was an instant hit with the Fisk Rubber Co., which a few years earlier had introduced its first pneumatic automobile tire. Its appeared nationally in Life magazine in 1911.[5]
Norman Rockwell was one of the artists who illustrated the Fisk tire boy, which allowed him to be creative.
Over the decades, the tousle-haired, sleepy-time boy appeared on every Fisk car and truck tire, in ads, on all stationery, booklets, posters, TV slides, calendars, tire store displays and even on clock faces.[6]