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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Art, Women's Rights and Camouflage

 

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Roy R. Behrens, Camoupedia

 

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.

•••

"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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption 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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption 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.

•••

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

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.

•••

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 Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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Charles Hanford applies stagecraft in WWI camouflage

The American promoter and showman Phineas T. Barnum was born in 1810. He was immensely successful and widely known by 1859, the birth year of Charles B. Hanford, who would in time himself become a leading actor in Shakespearean plays. 

Hanford’s middle name was Barnum, not in homage to Phineas T. (although they may have been related) but because Barnum was his mother’s family’s name.

Hanford died in 1926. Near the end of his life (as reported in obituaries), while World War I was ongoing, he collaborated with Thomas A. Edison “in planning methods of camouflage for ships and land operations of the army, his stagecraft lending itself readily to this work.” In earlier blog posts, we've talked about various aspects of Edison's involvement in WWI camouflage.

•••

Anon, CAMOUFLAGE IN CLOTHES PASSES in The Cleveland Press, March 18, 1918—

There’s camouflage in warfare,
But for men whose forms are lean,
In spring styles stores are showing
No camouflage is seen.

“Conserve” is the the edict
Throughout the USA
And that applies to clothing
In quite a funny way.

For tailors have elected,
In making suits this spring,
To make lines they call “skeleton”
The fashionable thing.

Th shoulders have no padding,
The waistline’s pulled in tight,
No bit of cloth unneeded
Is anywhere in sight.

So if you’re thin, flat chested,
Or your shoulder blades are round,
Conceal the fact, you cannot,
To show, it’s surely bound.

But there, don’t look so gloomy,
Just think what you would do
If tailors had decided
To conserve in trousers too.

They might have made it rompers
Like children wear in play.
Or maybe trunks and long hose
Like they wore in Shakespeare’s day.

But we’re not the ones to grumble
When all is said and done,
For we’ll go in Injun blankets
If ’twill help to lick the Hun. 

RELATED LINKS    

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

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face camouflage / sidestep the flu by growing a beard

Above Rex Whistler, comic portrait (repeated five times) of a bearded man whose identity changes when positioned upsidedown (c1930).

•••

Anon, HIRSUTE VEIL CAMOUFLAGE IS FLU GERM DUPE, in Salt Lake Herald Republican, December 15, 1918, p. 48—

Further hint to the flu dodger—masquerade behind nature’s mask, the moustache. Or, as a further safeguard, raise whiskers.

’Tis thus some of the health authorities advise. A fuzzy growth, whether on lip or jowl, they explain, is a germ strainer. The burglarious bacillus, trying to break in, has about as much chance as a camel at the needle’s eye or a carrot in a colandar.

If the moustahe or whiskers prove to be real preventatives, lots of Salt Lake men who pine to retire from an ailing world will take the hirsute veil. Faces which would have been displayed merely as faces may take on the aspect of sylvan retreats and bosky dells. Razor and scythe will be laid away and phizes will be allowed to sprout in all their wild carefree abandon. Familiar countenances will be concealed behind an impenetrable camouflage and the only recognizable features when friend meets friend will be a pair of eyes, a twinkling nose and two untrammeled ears.

The local Adonis, whose finely-chiseled beauty won the hearts of all feminine beholders, will appear in his bewhiskered role as plain as a welcome mat. The homely citizen will resemble a discarded Christmas tree, which has reached a sere and yellow past. It will be a sad day for the barbers, but the hedge trimmers and landscape gardeners may build up a profitable business.

If Salt Lake men decide to go in for moustaches and whiskers, the caravan-series may become strangely quiet. For not a one of them will have the hardihood to order soup.

RELATED LINKS    

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

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circumvent the heat by disguising oneself as a julep

Above Roy R. Behrens, from a series of digital montages, produced during the COVID pandemic. Copyright © the artist. Online here.

•••

O. Harvey, KNOW WHAT CAMO[U]FLAGE IS? WELL, THEN, HERE’S THE ANSWER, in The Telegram’s Daily Magazine, Salt Lake Telegram, September 8, 1917, p. 5—

I have decided to write a piece for the paper about a word that is not in the dictionary.

I get so reckless sometimes I don't care what I do.

Therefore I shall write a piece.

Old Man Webster knew a lot, but he didn't reckon on the war. You can read his well known books till you sprain an eye, but you won't see the word "Camouflage."

I don't know why, but it is so.

Camouflage is a bilking Industry with the libretto and music written by the French. The theory is to swindle the Germans' eyes. The Frenchmen cover themselves with a lot of leaves. They get the idea from Adam and Eve—but they don't pay any royalty on it.

After he is camouflaged up in a set of form fitting leaves, the Frenchman ankles off for a short vegetarian stroll toward the Kaiser's trenches. Some husky Boche tosses his optic toward him, but figures him out for a rhododendron bush rehearsing for a tableau vivant. First thing he knows, the rhododendron bush goes Democratic and poor old Hans is listed among the slightly killed, totally wounded or partially missing.

The idea of camouflage is to gyp the enemy. Give him one five for two tens. You heard about the cowboy who called on his best girl and found her bivouacking in another cowboy's lap. He pulled out his .45 caliber revolver to shoot the beauty spot off her false, deceiving chin, when she looks at him like page 256 in any of Ouida's novels.

"Do you believe your dearie, or do you believe your eyes?" she piped.

The poor fish believed his dearie, and they got married and lived snappily ever after. She had that fool cowboy all camouflaged up, with her metropolitan tongue and city ways.

Still, camouflage is no novelty among the unfair sex. A flapper will high heel along the macadamized turf, all ambushed up in a swarm of Dior Kiss. She will have a gang of summer furs lurking on her shoulders and a mob of paint, powder and other beauty utensils loitering on her face. She will have a complexion fairer than a supreme court decision. But when she gets home and starts to camouflage she puts on ten years for everything she takes off. She has one of those removable complexions. By the time that she has moulted her blonde hair, shed her automatic teeth and discarded her mechanical eye, she is older than hieroglyphics, and gaining every lap.

She has one of those folding complexions that you can carry in your handbag. The French have no monopoly on that camouflage institution.

Under the modern regime of beauty camouflage, everything about a woman's complexion Is detachable except her ears.

There are different branches of study In the camouflage curriculum. In Washington the senators have oratorical camouflage down to a science. Their specialty is painting word pictures, using their chin as a brush. There isn't a battle that the senate can't win with a few maxillary calisthenics. Rhetorical camouflage is great stuff, but you can't bridge the ocean with a pontoon of words. Any union senator with his vocal camouflagers on can build a fleet in three paragraphs or raise an army with a few chin excursions. Aesop's jackass had the camouflage Idea when he attended the zoo bal masque wearing the lion's coat and vest, but a few chirps of his fool mule tongue gummed his camouflage.

The gent who disguises himself behind a camouflage of women's skirts in order to escape military service to smaller than the Republican vote In Alabama. A guy that little can ambush himself behind a canceled postage stamp. The slackers are utilizing a camouflage of women's skirts, dependent relatives, conscientious objections, flat feet, weak heart and weaker knees. Which Is a camouflage that falls to camouflage by quite a few flages. And a culprit who tries to hide behind a woman's petticoats would have to pass his career in a bureau drawer. That's where the ladies are wearing their pettyskirts. We read the Delineator.

The paramount idea of camouflage is to create an aura of low visibility which will enable you to ramble around in safety. The chameleon has the right idea, and one that might be elaborated. For instance, a bill collector would never find you if you were camouflaged as a waste basket. All the props you need for this ambush is a loose wicker basket and a hat made of old newspapers, vacant letters and unraveled souvenir postcards. You can circumvent the heat by camouflaging yourself as a mint julep. With enough practice you can become a perfect julep. Even your wife will be unable to detect the difference on your breath.

Peace hath her camouflages as well as war. With a lIttle cranial dexterity and a few cerebral gymnastics, camouflaging can be utilized to alleviate the inconveniences of civilization.

There will be a camouflage for every ill.

Of course, in the case of a poor henpecked husband, we can paint no disguise with a brush.

The only camouflage will is distance. And you will have to paint that with your heels. 

RELATED LINKS    

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

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women are expert camoufleurs / it is their middle name

Cartoon, Fay King 1918

CAMOUFLAGE IS MIDDLE NAME OF WOMAN: EXPERIENCED IN KEEPING WILLIE ‘HALF-FARE’: IF SHE CAN PAINT RED CRAWFISH ON PLATTERS, CLOUDS WOULD COME EASY

by Fay King, San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1918

In my humble opinion, if there is one branch of the service that we women oughta excell in it’s CAMOUFLAGE.

If I had my way I’d give every woman a job in the camouflage department, and is she’s over forty she’s a master of the art.

Figure it out for yourself. A perfect forty-eight has been looking like a perfect thirty-six for centuries.

Give any woman three days’ notice and a good dressmaker and she can be hippy or hippless, according to fashion’s decree. She can look like Mrs. Vernon Castle or Maxine Elliott or whoever happens to be the most copied at the time, even if she has a face as hilly as San Francisco.

The wife of a small salaried man has long camouflaged as the wife of a steel magnate.

She can make a table full of dishes look like a square meal. Can you imagine what a cinch she’d have making a battleship look like a bucket?

Camouflage is woman’s middle name—why not make it her “bit”?

SURELY her experience at keeping Willie looking like a half-fare is proof enough of her success.

A lip stick and a powder puff have won many a husband for a clever woman. She could certainly win a war with a barrel of paint and a ton of powder.

She’s been painting red crawfish so long on platters and buttercups on butter dishes, she’d not have the slightest difficulty in designing storm clouds on ship masts, waves on battle-boats and daisies on the nose of a cannon.

RELATED LINKS    

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

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping