Saturday, December 15, 2018

Philip Little | Boston Common Camouflage

Philip Little (1918), Camouflaged Liberty Loan Building, Boston Common
In earlier posts, we reported on the World War I camouflage experiments of Salem artist Philip Little, including a colorful dazzle pattern applied to the Liberty Loan Headquarters building on the Boston Common in 1918. He called it "reverse camouflage" because its primary function was neither confusion nor concealment, but rather to drum up publicity for a series of fund-raising meetings for the Liberty Loan campaign. We've published news articles and black and white photographs of Little's building design here and here, but we've now just found a clearer one, as shown above.