Friday, July 18, 2025

more on camoufleur Carol M. Sax from Ottumwa Iowa

Carol M. Sax / passport photograph (AI colorized)
In earlier blog posts, we've shared quite a lot about Iowa-born theatrical designer and ship camoufleur Carol M. Sax, originally from Ottumwa. Below is a full article about him from 1917, with additional mention of Boston-area artist Clara Lathrop Strong. An essay on Sax's life and his involvement in camouflage is included in the book, DREAMS OF FIELDS: Memory Traces of Iowa's Past (August 2025).

•••

Katherine McKinsey, MARYLAND INSTITUTE CAMOUFLEURS: They Are Working With Carol M. Sax In The Hope Of Becoming An Integral Part Of The Nation's Military Establishment And Already Have Been Recognized By The Government, in Baltimore Sun, December 16, 1917—

Camouflage? What is this camouflage, anyway? You may have noticed the word—nay, you must have noticed it! It pops out at you as regularly and much more often than the brute who endeavors monthly to collect a large rent for your very small apartment. There is no escaping it. It is as popular as hot fudge sundaes!

Unless you have introduced it into your vocabulary and can work it as easily as any other good American word like "ain't" and "Ish'dworry" you are, so far as the chatter of the day is concerned, practically speechless. It appears in newspaper print quite as frequently as "over there," which is saying much.

An expert who comes into closeup contact with all terms, decadent and otherwise, flung about by fertile fancied writers, says the public is fairly "wised up" on the word camouflage. It is his candid opinion that you can run up to Elkton, drop into the corner grocery store and get from the grocer's clerk's youthful assistant a fairly intelligent definition of the word.

Camouflage? Why, Sure
A New Yorker who dropped into the Army Information Bureau in his city didn't find anyone there in doubt as to its meaning. The moment it was mentioned a dozen khaki clad figures stopped whatever they were doing and stood ready to volunteer for the duty of explaining. Camouflage is just as plain to them as the noses on their comrades' faces.

Jane Dixon in the New York Sun reports the great experience of the adventurous New Yorker as follows:

"'See that water cooler there?' indicated the Sammie who reached the front trench of information a trifle in advance of the others.

"The water cooler was conceded.

"'Well, if I took that water cooler and painted it gray to match the wall so the slackers who come in here just to hang around and get an earful wouldn't see it and drink up all our ice- water, that would be camouflage.'"

So you see: Camouflage is rigging up things to fool persons—particularly and especially enemy persons in war time. The word began in French music-hall slang before there was a war or any thought of war and it meant "faking"—which it still means, but with more serious import now.

The curious New Yorker's pursuit of knowledge on the subject of camouflage led him to the British recruiting offices where he was received by Sergeant Major MacKenzie. To quote again from Jane Dixon's report of the pursuit:

"'Camouflage?' he smiled from high altitude (he measures something over six feet four unshod). Indeed, yes. It is most important. We have been employing it regularly and with great success.

"'For instance,' prompting.

"The last time I remember seeing a flagrant example of the worth of camouflage was in the battle of the Somme. The artillery fire was terrific. We kept pumping in the shells and as we pumped we advanced.

"'We were in what is called the chalk country. There is a thin layer of topsoil and under it a chalk formation. The recoil of the big guns stripped the topsoil off, leaving the chalk exposed. The chalk, of course, is white. To prevent the enemy from sighting the guns against this white background daubed them white. It was difficult for airplanes to detect them and give the range.'

"'Sounds reasonable,' this by way of encouragement.

How It Works
"This daubing of guns, trucks, ambulances, supply trains, tanks and the like is general along the front. A variety of colors are used to give the bulk a conglomerate appearance and defy detection.

"'Gun positions are concealed by boughs stripped from trees and made to look like a clump of underbrush. A hedgerow, common in that country, will often be a mushroom growth built up to last a few hours and conceal an advanced trench.'

"What is the most effective bit of camouflage you have ever seen?' was asked.

"'A difficult question, I should say. You see in our ranks each man works his own camouflage. The ingenuity of individuals, companies and whole regiments in inventing ways and means to deceive the enemy is a marvel of human wit.

"'Probably the best example of it I have seen was a little cottage nestled down among fruit trees somewhere in France. It was a peaceful cot, with chickens and a pigsty and a cow and a dog lying on the stoop in the sụn.

"The enemy advanced within range. Suddenly one end of the peaceful little cottage opened up and a very unromantic nine-two poked its nose out. My word, how she did bite!'

"'The identity of the nine-two is not entirely clear, but from the tone used in referring to her she is adjudged a highly explosive shell shooting machine with steel jaws and a sweet tooth for Huns."

So this is camouflage! Since it has a French name no doubt the French were first to employ it. Then the British took it up and we Americans are to apply to the uses of camouflage our thought and skill and make it a thing of more value than has as yet been dreamed of.

The United States Army now numbers among its many branches one Camouflage Company which is in training at camp at the American University, near Washington. Its personnel includes artists, sculptors, architects, engineers, chemists. stage directors, theatre and circus mechanics, photographers, moving-picture scene makers, metal workers, etc. They are all enlisted or commissioned members of the army.

Maryland Institute Has Class
But not only in the properly enlisted and commissioned ranks of the Camouflage Corps is there training in the use of disguises and protective coloring. In Baltimore, at the Maryland Institute, there is a hard-working class of camouflage students preparing for a time when their services may be needed.

One of the plaster casting rooms in the basement is being used as a studio by the class and if you visit this studio it is best to enter warily since it is not pleasant to bump one's nose upon a camouflaged hunk of clay.

The work here is necessarily of a very limited nature since camouflage involves engineering, mechanics, construction (which includes building with wood and masonry, and the finer points of trench digging and the making of wire entanglements); and, in addition to the purely artistic branches of the work, the members of the Camouflage Corps are trained in all military branches in order that they may be self-protecting and thus a help rather than a burden to the army corps with which they are detailed.

But that such a class as that being conducted at the Maryland Institute may be of recognized value is indicated by a letter from Major General W. M. Black, Chief of Engineers, United States Army, under whose command is the Corps of Engineers known as the Camouflage Corps, which is commanded by Captain Aymar Embury, USR. The letter is addressed to Mr. Carol M. Sax, instructor of the School of Design of the Maryland Institute and instigator and volunteer instructor of the camouflage class. It reads as follows:

Letter To Mr. Sax
"In reply to your inquiries as to the probable utility of experimental work in camouflage conducted independently by the Maryland Institute of Fine Arts, I beg to inform you as follows: We believe that an organization trained as you have suggested will be extremely useful. First, because of the probability that new ideas might be developed by such an organization; second, because a continuous organization of this kind will be of value to the Department in insuring the preservation of all schemes which have been tried and thought out; third, because there may very likely be a call for civilians to prepare articles to be shipped abroad so that they may be concealed as readily as possible.

"As to the co-operation of this department with you—your organization will have to be entirely voluntary as we have no authority to assist such an organization financially. A competent officer or non-commissioned officer could be detailed to criticize and instruct or advise your classes, should its size and interest warrant this course. It will be advisable to have this course conducted near the American University Camp, Washington, DC, where camouflage experiments under the Regular Army are being made, if possible. If not they may be forwarded to some convenient spot near Baltimore.

"Mrs. S. L. Strong, of Marshfield Hills, MA, is desirous of forming such a class and writes that she has a very considerable number of persons who are ineligible for military service and who desire to attend such a class. I would suggest that you take the matter up with her and see if the two classes cannot be combined. Our experience is that interchange of ideas between groups of persons results in more fertility of invention than when it is confined to a few people."

A later letter from Major General Black stated that a scarcity of "competent officers or non-commissioned officers" which had become evident precluded the possibility of sending such an officer to the Maryland Institute class. The promise of the service of such an officer, however, is not the most significant note in the quoted letter of the department's recognition of the value of a class such as that suggested by Mr. Sax.

This letter says "second, because a continuous organization of this kind will be of value to the department in insuring the preservation of all schemes which have been tried and thought out." The significance of this clause appears when it is explained that the Camouflage Corps now in training is destined for work at the war fronts in Europe. When its course of training is completed it will be sent "over there," and unless its personnel is divided and some of its members are kept in this country to train future corps the results of its experiments and thought will be carried with it and a new corps will of necessity be compelled to start its experimental work where the first corps started instead of where the first corps finished.

Here, then, is the value of a definite and permanent camouflage organization composed of persons not eligible for military service, but eminently eligible for camouflage work. That the department would keep such an organization in touch with the work done by the Camouflage Corps can be the only inference placed upon the clause quoted above, for an organization cannot preserve "all schemes which have been tried and thought out" unless it is officially informed of those schemes.

Women Camoufleurs
Mrs. Strong, in a letter to Mr. Sax, told of her plans for a woman's camouflage training course for which she expected at least 1,100 members from all over the country. She had been offered land at Edgemoor, near Washington, for a camp and proposed a course of training to extend over a month or six weeks. This, of course, would be insufficient time to become proficient in all camouflage includes and the difficulty now, when Washington is overwhelmed by transient and new population, of housing and boarding a large body of women would be great. This class was not intended to be a permanent organization.

In a later letter Mrs. Strong expressed a strong desire to merge her plans with those of Mr. Sax if it should become possible to have a military instructor from the Camouflage Corps. In the event of such co-operation about 50 women would come to Baltimore to join the class. Home accommodations can be secured for them by the Young Women's Christian Association. Mr. Sax has been assured by that organization. But the difficulty in carrying such a plan into operation lies in the fact that there is not to be a military instructor. So it is probable that the Maryland Institute class will continue as it is now—an independent and voluntary organization working under the tutelage of Mr. Sax and with the sanction and approval of the War Department as given through Major General Black.

Therefore any day that you may feel so inclined you may step into the camouflage studio at the Maryland Institute and watch a clay cube be made to become invisible by the clever application of paint. So far only the problems of protective coloring as are to be overcome in a fixed light coming from a single angle have been studied. Shortly the class will hold its meetings outdoors so as to become familiar with the difficulties to be overcome in the changing light of the open air. There are at present eighteen members and they meet every day.

Sax Enthusiastic
In speaking of his work Mr. Sax becomes enthusiastic. "I have always been: very much interested in the protective coloring of animals as an outgrowth of my routine art work and I studied quit a good deal in the American Museum of Natural History in New York and in the Field-Columbian Museum in Chicago, where the animals are mounted in their natural surroundings so as to show the value of their colorings as a protection from detection.

"When the subject of camouflage in war first became known I was interested in it for the same reason that the camouflage of the wild animals appealed to me. I read whatever I could secure on the subject and heard several excellent and interesting lectures. There is, however, so little written or generally known of methods already used or still waiting the discovery of the experimenters that the ideas of the veriest amateurs have every possibility of being quite as valuable as those of the experienced 'camoufleur.'


There are two systems of camouflage in use. One makes battleships invisible at a distance of three miles. I could see them fairly distinctly at distance of one mile, but I could see the battleships painted the customary plain gray even more distinctly at a greater distance.

"The colors are put on in alternate stiples of glazed and dull paint. The blotches are by no means applied at haphazard as a close view of the result might lead one to suppose, but a small, flat model of the ship's side is made and painted during a series of experiments in which it is frequently placed upon a wheel and revolved at a definite speed, whereupon the colors blend into the color of sky and sea or not, just as the colors are correctly placed or not.

"This is, of course, only one phase of camouflage, but it involves more than any other the problems of protective coloring. There is here no framework covered with boughs to hide a gun—which is merely the hiding of a gun. A gun painted in such a fashion that it merges at a certain distance with the colors of the earth upon which it rests will have been treated to a coat of protective coloring.

Disguising Wire Entanglements
"The McKay system is much used in the camouflaging of wire entanglements. A black wire stretched upon ground of light color, or a bright wire stretched over a dark surface is easily discernable, but a wire painted in alternate stripes of black and white becomes at a comparatively small distance invisible to the observer.

"And now that we are really getting to know something of the methods of protective coloring it is necessary for us to seek ways of detecting the result such methods when used by our enemies. It has been learned that a cleverly camouflaged fence may be detected by the shadow which it casts and though such a shadow may not be readily discerned by the eyes it is infallibly revealed by the camera.

"The photographic plate also frequently reveals artificial coloring. It has even been said that the camera can detect the use of artificial foliage or grass, because it photographs in a different tone from that which real foliage or grass photographs, but no successful demonstration of this fact (if it is a fact) has as yet been made.

"The possibilities for new discoveries of value in protective coloring or in the detection of protective coloring are tremendous and it is our hope that some of the discoveries of greatest value may be made through experiments made in Baltimore at our own art school." 

RELATED LINKS 

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

hollywood leg enhancer is biting the legs that feed him

Hazel Canning, EXPERTS ON FEMININE LEGS PUT CHARACTER ABOVE BEAUTY in Boston Sunday Post, April 29, 1945, p. 5—

Willy of Hollywood [dba Willy's of Hollywood] launched the topic of legs.

Willy is a stocking maker and leg camouflage expert in the movie city.

In fact, it is said that Willy can make stockings to give insoucient slenderness to the stumpy legs: a saucy challenge to the leg rather blocky and unshaped; whimsy, appeal and charm to the toughest, the stodgiest, the stiffest of feminine appurtenance which connects a shapely or otherwise ankle to the knee.

Recently Willy studied Miss Greer Garson as she was photographed in her kilt costume for the dance in Random Harvest.

These words he spoke more as a connoisseur than a critic, but nevertheless, the man whose speciality is reshaping feminine legs was not exactly pleased with Greer Garson’s. His comment sped across the ocean and into the London Mail. Garson read it, then she spoke.

“I,” said she, “have no need of a leg camouflager. My legs are my own; the ones with which I dance in Random Harvest. My paying customers have never complained about my legs. Now if this Willy is really a leg camouflager, I think he is rash. By advertising his trade, is he not, rather, biting the legs that feed him?”…

RELATED LINKS 

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

Saturday, July 12, 2025

I can transform anyone into whatever they want to be

Above Cartoon by W.K. Haselden in The Daily Mirror, January 14, 1918.

•••

EDITH HEAD (Hollywood costume designer), as interviewed in The Daily Mirror, November 2, 1970—

Well, I can go back to Mae West or right forward to Paul Newman. I was the first one to put clothes on Mae.

I remember she said to me: “Fit it tight, honey, I want them all to know I’m a girl from every angle.” But it didn’t work with Anita Eckberg.

There was so much of her that kept falling out.

I’m a camouflager. I can transform anyone into anything they want to be.…


•••

camouflage research site map

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Thursday, July 10, 2025

camouflage practices in Mexico in advance of WWI

Above José Guadalupe Posada, Calavera de Don Quixote, relief etching, 1913.

•••

MEXICAN CAMOUFLAGE in The Nenana Daily News (Nenana, Yukon, Alaska) November 16, 1918, p. 2—

Camouflage as war art was known in Mexico long before it was used in Europe, although not by that name. Mexican soldiers since the days of [President Porfirio] Dias have practiced concealment for military advantage. They have been known to place their high crowned straw hats on poles stuck in sand hills in such a way as to make the enemy force believe they were defending the hill, then flank the enemy from another direction. [Victoriano] Huerta's federal soldiers used camouflage to conceal the port holes in the sides of armored railroad cars. A checkerboard pattern was painted on the sides of these cars and black and white squares concealed the rifle ports.

The Mexican fighting men have also used the trick of covering their high hats and bodies with brush to advance on the enemy positions through thickets. Villa originated the plan of driving a herd of cattle into a beseiged town at night in order to draw the fire of the defenders and to explode any mines in the streets.

The most primitive, though effective application of camouflage in Mexico was the practice of the Tarahuamara [Rarámuri] Indian scouts with [Francisco] Madero’s revolutionary army. These half naked scouts would precede the army, and, by doing a kind of pattern dance, raised a cloud of dust which concealed them from the view of the enemy and permitted them to approach the enemy positions without being detected in their envelope of dust which resembled a dust whirl common on Mexican deserts.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

barber poles in WWI / trickily and cockily camouflaged

hypothetical camouflage schemes © Roy R. Behrens
Editorial, NATURE, ART AND CAMOUFLAGE in Topeka Daily Capital (Topeka KS), October 21, 1917, p. 4B—

The new war art of camouflage is not limited to land, by any means. One of our boys transported to Europe has described a fine example of this art, in the case of the American destroyers, hunters of U-boats, who came out to meet the transport fleet as it neared the French coast.

The smudge of the destroyers could be seen 20 minutes before they themselves were visible, and when their hulls finally appeared they bore the appearance of a two-stack freighter heavily loaded and low in the water. As a matter of fact the destroyer has four funnels instead of two, but the two not seen at a distance are cleverly camouflaged to give the appearance of a freighter instead of a war vessel. As the boats came nearer the boys thought they were French, owing to their gay and bizarre coloring, or decoration. Their sides were painted in zigzag lines of white and blue, while the rigging and “concealed” smoke stacks were trickily and cockily camouflaged in wavy lines, or “snaky ribbons” of green, white and blue. The general effect of the American destroyers on the sea, when transacting business, as soon as they can be closely observed, is suggested by the nickname that the American soldiers immediately gave them of “deep-sea barber shops.” The U-boat is the “canned Hun.”

“Protective coloring” has become a new art under war stress. Biologists have associated this art, when employed by nature itself, with strict and crude imitation of environment. There are insects, as described in Prof. Vernon Kellogg’s Darwinism Today [NYC: Henry Holt, 1907], which carry protective coloration to such an extreme of verisimilitude, of punctilious exactness of imitation, that Prof. Kellogg says that they overdo the natural selection business and make it a little ridiculous. That is, they protect themselves beyond all reason, even to the minute imitation of invisible detail. This is regarded by biologists as one of the serious evidences against Darwinism, or natural selection.

But war camouflage has entirely departed from crude imitation. The notion that protective coloration of warships must necessarily be a dull sea-gray disappeared long ago, along with the notion that a hidden battery must be colored in harmony with the foliage of the environment. New principles are employed, as in the case of the spiral green, white and blue lines on the stacks of torpedo boats, the zigzag lines of blue and white on the hull, and the same scheme of wavy zigzag, or spiral painted lines and splashes of color in varicolored combinations on cannon behind the front.

Yet the truth is that the new camouflage follows the principles first adopted by the artists of the Barbizon school and soon carried to extremes by radical painters, the principles that later, about 85 years ago, developed into the new landscape method of impressionism. Camouflage and impressionism are twin-sisters. Nature is in fact colored not on simple, dull principles, but its coloration is greatly mixed, weirdly so, and with no regard to conventional ideas of consistency or harmony. Once in a while, as in this exceptionally brilliant month in Kansas, the true principle of mixed coloration appears to the plain, common eye in viewing the stunning prairie landscape. But to the now initiated artist these colors are present, even when hidden.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Monday, July 7, 2025

Mrs Johnson / most artistic camoufleur in Omaha NE

Above Members of the American Womens Camouflage Corps in the process of applying a camouflage scheme (for fundraising purposes) on the wall of theatre in Times Square NYC, c1918.

•••

TALE OF FAITHFUL HOUSEMAID. This “Perfect Jewel” Won Admiration on Every Side. WAS PRIZE COVETED BY ALL, in Omaha Daily Bee (Omaha NE) July 18, 1918, p. 1—

Because of the humiliating nature of the tragedy which occurred, and because, too, this is a story of camouflage, it is both wise and necessary that the heroine of this tale be called, for convenience, Mrs. Johnson—there are more Johnsons in the city directory than any others.

This Mrs. Johnson lives in that vague and extensive district embraced in the West Farnam neighborhood. For the last year she has been envied—wholeheartedly envied by all of her feminine neighbors.

She possessed that rara avis known as a faithful maid. The maid in question was Titian haired, very much so, wore green goggles and a rather striking though indefinite individuality. Every morning, when her mistress was supposed to be enjoying her “beauty sleep” the maid would appear and sweep off the porch, dust the porch furniture, and when occasion demanded would scrub the woodwork and the windows. She was industrious, painstaking and painfully neat—a perfect pearl of a servant. It was noticeable, too, that during other hours of the day she tactfully obliterated herself from public view, supposedly devoting herself to duties in the kitchen and chambers where she unobtrusively slaved from early dawn to dark.

Neighbors plotted and planned to make the acquaintance of this ne plus ultra of servants, some, it must be confessed, with ulterior and selfish motives of luring her away from her mistress by any kind of blandishment or strategy that could be employed.

But she was as evasive as the fabled  Irishman's flea. Nevertheless, her fame became great in the neighborhood and grew on the element of mystery of her complete isolation after the outdoor work was performed,

All other maids and servants in the neighborhood were abjured by their several mistresses to model their energies and devotion along the lines of Mrs. Johnson's “jewel.”

One fateful day last week the tragedy occurred which wrecked an idol.

The mysterious servant was at work washing a window at Mrs. Johnson’s home. As usual she was the cynosure of many covetous eyes. She worked silently, albeit blithely, when suddenly she lost her equilibrium and for a moment it seemed she would fall from her perch to the ground with a dull, sickening thud.

Frantically she tried to recover her balance and save herself from a fall. She threw up her arms and as she did so she scalped herself completely and tore the green spectacles from her optics. There, to the affrighted onlookers, was revealed Mrs. Johnson minus a red wig and the disguise of green eye shades—a perfect jewel of a maid no longer, but her own sweet and efficient self.

The neighbors were slhocked. by the revelation, but what she lost in prestige as a maid Mrs. Johnson has gained in the reputation of being the most artistic camouflager in Omaha.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Art, Women's Rights and Camouflage

 

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Besets Calculations of U-Boat Commanders in WWI

SS Suevic, British steamship
C.C. Brainerd, DAZZLE PAINTING ISN'T CAMOUFLAGE; CAN'T CONCEAL SHIPS. But A conglomeration of Colors Can, and Does. Puzzle U-Boat Pirates. HAS SAVED MANY A CRAFT, in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 14, 1918, p. 2—

Washington, July 13—Often Washington hears the echo of talk among people at the Atlantic seaports, who see odd things when a ship or a convoy sets sail for Europe or returns to these shores. These people see things that look like a hasheesh dream; strange objects of extraordinary colors moving along in the water, that finally resolve themselves into ships. And the talk that follows is generally to the effect:

"Well, if that's what they call camouflage, it's nothing but insanity. Nobody can help spotting a ship that looks like that. It simply shouts at you."

The Washington naval and marine experts smile when they hear that sort of comment. In a general way, they admit the criticism—the ship does shout at you. But they point out that shouting may be so loud as to be confusing; and that is exactly the theory on which they paint ships nowadays. They do not try to conceal them; that has been tried and found impossible. So they have resorted to confusion, rather than concealment. And they do not call it camouflage; they call it dazzle painting.

Can't Conceal Ships at Sea
When the Ancient Mariner said: As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean, he may have had the modern scheme of dazzle painting in mind. But he was wrong on one or two points. The painted ship of today is far from idle and it does not sail on a painted ocean. If it were possible to paint the ocean, ship concealment would be easy. On shore, where the armies practice camouflage, it is possible to alter and dress up the background so as to assist in concealing an object. But at sea the background must always remain the same. Water and sky meet at the horizon, and that is all there is to it.

Early in submarine warfare it was learned that ships of solid color, no matter what it was, were comparatively easy to pick out. Experiments were made with various neutral tints, the favorite being the battleship gray so long employed in navies. Conspicuous shades, like white, were avoided, as a matter of course, but nevertheless the submarines found easy picking. The ship in her normal garb was readily identified as to size, character, speed, direction and other elements entering into the problem of shooting a torpedo at her. Try as they would, it was not possible for the marine experts to make the ship invisible, or even semi-visible. Thomas A. Edison was one of the famous inventors who tried his hand at the problem, and without much success.

Dazzle Painting Nearly a Science
Having discovered that it was of little or no use to attempt conceal-ment by the use of paint, the marine sharps began studying the problem of trying to confuse the eyes of the submarines, and they soon learned that here was a promising field of endeavor. So they plunged into the realm of dazzle painting, until it has now become considerable of a science. One ship, they found, will lend itself to a certain style of treatment, depending upon her size, shape and speed, while another vessel must be painted in an entirely different sort of way. It is desirable, too, to maintain a wide variety of styles, so that submarine commanders may not become accustomed to a particular thing.

Sometimes a large ship will go to sea with the image of a smaller ship painted on her side, the latter image standing out as the conspicuous feature of the painting. At a distance of five or ten miles such a vision has been found to be decidedly confusing, particularly in a rough sea and thick weather. The submarine commander often thinks he sees one kind of a ship when he is looking at another. Further than that, by the employment of dazzle paint, he may be deceived into thinking that a ship is approaching him head on, when as a matter of fact, it is broadside to him.

Aim Is to Puzzle Pirates
There are so many varieties of dazzle painting that there seems to be no regular rule about it, although certain broad principles are followed. The mere fact that it is not an exact science is one of its strong points, in the matter of ship protection. Sometimes plain black and white or gray tints are employed. Again, the most vivid colors are used—reds, yellows, green, etc. Some ships of [unclear] stripes and some in spots, of all sizes and shapes. Two ships of identical size and build may be painted in an entirely different manner, so that the submarine pirate finds it impossible to lay down any general classification.

It is undoubtedly true that many of the dazzle painted ships are more conspicuous in their war colors than they would be if dressed up in the sane and normal way. But that does not make them easy marks for, a submarine; it makes them more difficult to hit. The "sub" commander sighting one of these vessels is often in doubt for a considerable time as to just which way his prospective victim is headed, how big she is, and how fast she is moving, although these are things that he must know to a certainty if he hopes to make a successful attack. And while he is trying to make head or tail out of the confusing object on the horizon he often loses the precious opportunity. The ship, by her dazzle paint, confuses him until it has passed beyond the danger point. This, of course, is by no means always the case, but it has happened sufficiently often to prove that dazzle painting is worth while. The purpose constantly in the mind of the dazzle painters is not to hide the ship, but to turn it into such an apparition that it dazzles the eye and upsets the calculations of the German who is trying to plot its range, its course and its speed.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Roy R. Behrens, Camoupedia


 

Thursday, July 3, 2025

have lent a beauty and color to ocean-going vessels

John Everett
In years past, we have posted images of and articles about the World War I-era paintings of dazzle-camouflaged ships by British artist (Herbert Barnard) John Everett. Those earlier blog posts can be accessed online here. A number of his artworks were exhibited in New York in 1918, as is described in a lengthy article and interview in the Atlanta Constitution, the full text of which is quoted below. It was apparently written by Anne Morton Lane (London correspondent for the New York Mail and Express) and appeared in other newspapers as well. The paintings by Everett in this post are in the collection of the Royal Museums in Greenwich UK, and are not the same as those reproduced in earlier posts.

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"DAZZLE ARTIST" TO EXHIBIT HERE Outcome of Naval Camouflage, Work of English Painter, Is Unique in Its Interest and Beauty, in Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta GA), December 22, 1918—

London, December 9—Toward the middle of December there will be an exhibition in New York of pictures which have received the sanction of the British government to be shown outside Great Britain. They are the work of John Everett, a highly interesting and distinguished English artist, who has made a specialty of seascapes, and pictures of ships on the high seas, and at rest in docks.

Early in the war when the use of camouflage as applied to shipping became a special and practical portion of defense at sea, as the camouflage of guns, airplanes, munition sheds and other machinery of battles became a component part of war on land, Mr. Everett saw the wonderful possibilities that might accrue from a record of the commerce afloat as a pictorial history in color. As we all know, now that hostilities have ceased, the mystery that surrounded all ports and shipping in the allied countries was as necessary as it was dense. Therefore it was only after many weary months that Mr. Everett through personal persuasion, practical influence and genuine hard work was accorded the privilege by his majesty's government of visiting the great docks of London and Liverpool in order that he might make pictures of the amazing transformations wrought by paint and scientific knowledge upon the units of the fleet. 

John Everett
John Everett
 Submarines at Rest
And now that the U-boats have ceased from troubling and the submarines are at rest within British waters. by permission of his majesty's government Mr. Everett will shortly be able to display the fruit of his two or three years' work in dockyards, at exhibitions to be held in London and New York.

I went to see Mr. Everett the other day in his interesting and remarkable studio, which is situated off the beaten track of general traffic in a sort of side-tracked field in St. John's Wood—a well-known artists' quarter of suburban London. This studio of Mr. Everett's is a converted barn of great size and with unusual lighting qualifications. Its walls are lined, and a large portion of its floor space filled with pictures of ships. All these ships display camouflage designs, and they represent many vessels that have plied their way between England and America in war-time, and survived the lurking dangers of enemy attacks. Others have succumbed to the perils of U-boats. These pictures form a remarkable record that must be of extreme interest not only to those people who have crossed the Atlantic in war-time, but also to many thousands who have heard of the strange masquerading of ships on the high seas.

In England the painting and designing of sea-going vessels has been carried on under the direction of a department known colloquially as the "dazzle office," and Mr. Everett was appointed as its illustrator.

Curtain Is Lifted
Now that the curtain is being lifted from some of the amazing secrets of the admiralty and war office. Mr. Everett has many interesting things to relate concerning the art of "dazzle-painting" at sea, and the possibility of its continuation after the war.

"Although the word camouflage is an excellent one that has been adopted by the Anglo-Saxon tongue since its uses in war-time have been discovered," said Mr. Everett, "I think that the descriptive 'dazzle-ships' is a more descriptive title when applied to the use of this art at sea. And after all, it is not a very new idea, because we are told that the ancient Greeks painted their ships with big eyes and cheeks upon their bows to give them a terrifying expression of wisdom that might serve to confound their enemies. But we moderns did better than this in war-time; we had our ships painted in ways such that their strange colorings and curious stripings and curves would puzzle the enemy and serve to give rise to uncertainty by dazzling the eyes of the watchful foe. In fact, as I very early discovered in my work as official artist to the dazzle department, the object of ship painting in war-time has really very little to do with the real meaning of the French word camouflage, which means the dissimulation of natural objects with the landscape by protective coloring. Dazzle-painting was invented by the well-known sea painter, Lieutenant Commander Norman WIlkinson, RNVR, and it is the only system which has practically solved the problem of the variation of light, and which attains its object not by eluding the submarine by invisibility, but by confusing its observers.

Limitations of Paint
By recognizing the limitations of paint, the art of dazzle as applied to ocean-going ships pushes these limitations as far as possible, and makes the object of its being not invisibility, but distortion; it makes the problem of calculating the course of vessel extremely difficult.

"Each design, as you will notice in the many pictures I have painted of ships, is entirely different from the other entirely different from the other. No two dazzle-ships are alike in detail, either in color or design; the success of Commander Wilkinson's inventions were so marked during all the weary war-time months that they were adopted by every entente nation with a marine service. I think that this is one of the reasons why my pictures when they are seen in New York will be of extreme interest Americans. They will then be able to see exactly the source from which came all those wonder ships that braved the perils of the sea during the past four years. I have shown my portraits of these masquerading voyagers in English waters, and British docks—settings that perhaps will be better appreciated nowadays in the new world, because it is so closely linked in these days with the old."

Among the pictures which will be seen in New York next month by permission of the British government are "HMS Victorian Bringing a Convoy of American Troops Into London." Mr. Everett told me that this ship was afterwards torpedoed. She was hit amidships, but by some miracle she was brought into port and no lives were lost. Another picture is of the steamship Shuma discharging timber. 

Dazzled Flour Ship
"This," explained Mr. Everett, "in a ship with an interesting dazzle showing a great deal of light sky blue picked out with black and white." Another picture shows a dazzled flour ship, and another the conversion of the Cunard steamship Nanerig into an armored cruiser. These and many other pictures of a like kind display with extraordinary clearness something of the practical side of what those who have "gone down to the sea in ships" have had to do in order to confound the enemy.

There is something very dramatic about these pictures of Mr. Everett's. They give the story of the life of the sea, and the traffic across that great grim stretch of water between England and America with wonderful vividness. The artist confesses that these pictures, painted under circumstances both difficult and dangerous, are the most fascinating work he has ever undertaken.

"The painting of these pictures, which I regard as a sort of diary of the merchant service at sea during war-time," he said, "has given me an immense belief in and admiration for this dazzle theory; the whole point of it has been the deception of the submarine as to the course of a ship, thus causing miscalculation of her distance. You ask me if the dazzled-ships will die with war-time; I suppose for practical purposes they will do so. But it seems to me a pity, for undoubtedly they have lent a beauty and color to ocean-going vessels and have transformed dirty old tramp steamers into objects of remarkable harmony of shape and hue."

Certainly amongst the strange records which the war leaves behind it these paintings of "dazzle-ships" by John Everett will not be among the least curious. It has been suggested that the dazzled colors might still be used in peace time, not to distort, but to emphasize shipping. As Mr. Everett himself suggests, it certainly might be diverted from its past uses to the purpose of making a ship's course more clear and thus bringing about an avoidance of collisions. 

John Everett
 

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

camouflaging ships to look like clouds on the horizon

WWI ship camouflage painters
The Observer in The Milford Cabinet and Wilton Journal (Nashua NH), May 15, 1919, p, 2—

…The Observer knows he isn’t an artist, but he had a notion he could take a 3-inch brush and a can of paint and somehow get it spread around. He had watched house painters and it looked easy. Also he has a friend who never knew anything about painting. At least nobody ever suspected he did. But when the war came along and war jobs cropped up, this chap attached himself to Uncle Sam’s payroll, somewhere near the top, and got himself appointed to a shipyard as Chief Camouflager or General of Camoufluers, and bossed the job of painting ships to look like clouds on the horizon. He got away with it. His pay checks were large and regular.

So the Observer bought a brush for $1.50 and a small pot of paint for $2.20 and proceeded to take some of the conceit out of himself. He still thinks he could paint a house so it would fool a submarine commander into thinking it was a school of whales or a grove of pine trees; but painting it so it looks like a house is something different yet. When the job is done the Observer wants his house to look like a human habitation not like a spotted cow or an aurora borealis with streaks running up and down.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

eyewitness sightings of dazzle camouflaged vessels

USS George Washington in camouflage (1918)
John Johnston [from La Crosse WI] in a letter quoted in JOHNSTON TELLS OF BEING UNDER THE AMERICAN MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE PRECEDING GALLANT YANK ATTACK AND CAPTURE OF CANTIGNY STRONGHOLD in La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press, March 2, 1918, p. 9—

It was a happy bunch of fellows—a most happy bunch, I might say—who were in the thing to the last drop of the hat. There were nine transports in the group. Among our convoys was the South Carolina and an old captured German raider which was called “The Barber Pole,” because its camouflage made it look like a barber’s sign. One of our ships was the George Washington, which President Wilson sailed to France in.

Everything was fine until we reached the war zone. Then we experienced our first touch of war. Everyone had been given the “stand to” drill, with life preservers. We had our own regimental band with us, and things were gay. I was standing with a group of the men on the deck singing “It’s Easy to Lick the Kaiser.” Every fellow on board was anxious for a look at a submarine, and everybody had his eyes peeled. There were no lights on board.

You couldn’t smoke a cigarette, because the penalty for lighting a match was death. The flare of a match could be seen for two miles out at sea. I was looking over the rail of the Covington at the camouflaged South Carolina. With her silver paint, it seemed as though one could almost look through her.…

US Navy camoufleurs with plans and model of USS George Washington

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Monday, June 30, 2025

an expert at making black eyes disappear with paint

Movie poster (1937)
SIGN PAINTER AND CAMOUFLAGER OF BLACK EYES DIES in Graham Daily Reporter (Graham TX), January 24, 1936—

NEW HAVEN—Julius A. Rida, dean of New Haven sign painters and an expert at making “black eyes” disappear with deft touches of a paint brush, died last night.

Rida established a sign shop here when he was 19 years old. His place became a favorite with young bloods of bygone days with more spirit than pugilistic skill.

For $5 Rida would delicately color damaged eye areas and restore them to the natural appearance. The job took less than twenty minutes.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

like artists, might poets also qualify as camoufleurs?

Bewilderness and James Joyce
WANT OUR POETS, UNCLE? in South Bend News-Times (South Bend IN). August 21, 1917—

Uncle Sam is getting up some “camouflage” units of amateur artists. To “camouflage” you fool the enemy aviators by painting a cannon so that it looks like a log, or a log to look like a cannon; or you make a munition train look like a roadway; and so on—the more you make things look like what they ain’t, the more of a “camouflager” you are. The American amateur artist is sure the boy for this job, and we’re hot for “camouflage” to the hilt.

We’d like to ask Uncle Sam if he has any war space for amateur poets. If he has, we know where he can get a fair-sized cohort. Putting our amateur poets beside our amateur landscapists in Europe mightn’t do much for the universal brotherhood vision, but it would create a strong desire for peace.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

dazzle camouflaged ship used as advertising space

Above FUNNY BUSINESS cartoon with caption “I think the camouflager sold some advertising space!” by Ralph A. Hershberger, in The Pittsburgh Press, July 23, 1945.

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Raymond A. Tolbert, HOBART MAN WRITES OF OCEAN VOYAGE: Young Attorney Enroute to Front as YMCA Secretary Tells His Experiences, in The Times-Democrat (Altus OK), January 17, 1918—

Yesterday we received quite a thrill when a ship passed us in the distance. I looked at it through a kindly Frenchman’s binoculars but it looked more like a zebra than anything else, it was so camouflaged. The art of the camouflager is quite unique. As we left the harbor. we passed a large number of ships spotted and daubed up in much the same way that a small boy paints a barn.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

Saturday, June 28, 2025

comical British camouflaged shooting jackets in 1894

suggested shooting jackets
Above This is a Victorian-era cartoon (most likely British), published in 1894, artist and source publication unknown. The heading on the original was Comic Pictures, with a subtitle of Some Suggestions for Shooting Jackets. It has no direct connection to the article that follows below in this blog.

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CAMOUFLAGE IS JUST GOOD OLD BLUFF APPLIED TO WAR TACTICS: The Greeks and Their Wooden Horse Originated It, the French Developed It and the Yanks Excel at it, in Salt Lake Herald-Republican-Telegram, April 28, 1918, p. 10—

Some folk will take you clear back to the wooden horse of Troy for the origin of camouflage, and still others insist that it was first used somewhere beyond that. Then there are those who contend that it was first used in this, the Great World War.

We do know of instances where camouflage was used in the fairly ancient history of our own country, as a country or colony, and we are fairly well up on the methods of utilizing it now that it has passed through its comic supplement stage and all the comic artists have had their go at it.

The country is taking it in its serious aspect and the war department is encouraging the best thought which can be concentrated on the subject.

It has been said by teachers of the art that camouflage, simmered down and stripped of its glamor, is nothing other than the good old peacetime game of bluff applied to war tactics. If it be that, then who shall excel the American at it?

CAMOUFLAGE FOR 'ALL
In the accompanying illustration are shown only a few of the many, many means of utilizing the art in land warfare. There are countless other tricks on land and more being used in sea fighting and air battles.

The camouflaged road Is the result of hanging boughs and brown cloth drapes over a road as flies hang over a stage. Troop movements may be made over such a road in comparative safety. The big French gun In Flanders pictured here is painted so as to harmonize with a wooded background. The oddly striped tree climber may hide without great risk of being seen by aviators of the enemy, in a tree top while he does sniping or observation work. The papier mache horse being used as an intelligence or listening station appears to the enemy as a horse carcass, not a sight to arrouse suspicion in No Man's Land.

Then there is the camouflage of so wrapping a man that he appears to be a tree stump.

ABSENCE COST LIVES
The olive drab and khaki uniforms worn by our fighting men today are the outgrowth of the costly absence of camouflage ln the past. The blue uniforms worn in the Civil War were so much in contrast with any surroundings the soldiers might lave that the boys of the South could find their marks readily. And the gray of the Southern troops was little better. Both were infinitely more serviceable, however, than the bright red uniforms worn in earlier wars by the British.

Braddock's famous defeat by the Indians may be traced to the shining targets offered by the scarlet uniforms of Braddock's men for the arrows of the Indians, while the slim, brown figures of the natives blended so harmoniously with the tree trunks, the ground and the underbrush that the Britons could scarcely see where they were.

In the East have sprung up, since the war sucked the United States into itself, numerous schools for camoufleurs with official and semi-official training forces. Artists are going into the work with enthusiasm.

JUNGLE ITS ORIGIN
The American Institute of New York is beginning next month a series of lectures to engineers and painters on "Camouflage as an Aid to Modern Warfare." Lieutenant H. Ledyard Towle of the Seventy-First NYG machine gun company, an expert camoufleur and an artist and painter of some note, is to deliver the Ieclures.

In a lecture recently before New York artists, Lieutenant Towle sald:

"The Lord knows more about camouflage than any of us amateurs. Consider the lion and his tawny mane. In repose he Is a tiny undulation on the sunburnt clap; the zebra, with his stripes, lost in the shadow of the tall grasses: the leopard, with his spots, crouched for a spring amid the sun flecked leaves of a tree, who would suspect his presence? Isn't it astonishing that with such examples of the value of protective colors that we have done so little to develop the idea? The chameleon gives us the art perfectly demonstrated."

The French made the first effective use of camouflage in this war. They were the first to see that its results warranted specialization in it. After the Germans were turned back at the Marne and the lines of opposing trenches stretched themselves from the sea to the Swiss border, the fight in the west theatre resolved itself into a standoff as far as actual fighting was concerned, and the battle became one of wits. Fool the other fellow and victory was yours.

FRENCH WERE FIRST
The French withdrew from the fighting ranks artists, painters, metal workers, photographers, architects and engineers. A special corps of camoufleurs was formed. Their work has been marvelous.

The camoufleur's art has reached its apex in No Man's Land. The toe of a dead soldier's boot may house tho eye of a periscope and from the boot to a trench may run the tunnel through which the observer communicates. An old post, left standing after the wire entanglement it supported has been shot away, may have a periscope eye and a tunnel. A limp form in the uniform of a soldier enmeshed in the wire may lure comrades out to bring It in. And when they touch it they may set off a bomb which ends their quest—and their days.

The first company of American camoufleurs is encamped just outside Washington and volunteers and drafted men aro being sent there weekly from all parts of the country.

To use the words of Lieutenant Towle again:

"If the wit and technical cleverness of a few men can be the large factor in saving a regiment, then the time and trouble taken in the process of training for camouflage will have been well spent." 

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and CamouflageEmbedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual artDisruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping