Above We have posted at various times about American artist Alon Bement (1876-1954). He taught art education at Columbia University, where, according to the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, he had an important influence on her when she was his student. 
Ship Camoufleur Alon Bement
During World War I, Bement was a civilian camoufleur for the US Shipping Board, in the course of which he worked with William Andrew Mackay in New York. He wrote at least four magazine and news articles on ship camouflage, in which he also talked about how camouflage could be useful in everyday life (in painting ones house, for example, or in choosing fashionable clothing to wear).
Only recently have we found yet another article—not written by him—in which he was interviewed about people’s hands, in which he asserted that hands “reveal ones personality as clearly as does the face.”
The article was published in The New York Sun, September 21, 1919, p. 10. It includes a portrait photograph (shown above) of Bement. At first glance, it appears that he might be holding a model of a camouflaged ship, but a closer look reveals that he is instead holding an artist’s palette.
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From LETTERS FROM READERS OF THE NEWS in Des Moines News (Des Moines IA), September, page 4—
CAMOUFLAGE AGAIN—Now, patrons, this camouflaging isn't such a new. It's been cavorting around these quarters for some time, but it's never been labeled. The butcher puts his wrists on the scale with the round steak, and the camouflaged wrists toll up also as round steak.
The grocer camouflages the berries to look like a healthy boxful by putting the big boys on top and it looks like a quart box but it’s been camouflaged; the bottom has been given a lift. The summer time is harvest time for camouflage salve among the vacation Wilburs and Tessies—y'know, around the beaches, etc.
A Wilbur hung up in noisy togs camouflages himself to some Tessie as a regular devil millionaire’s son, and she vise worser, and, when the twin weeks are went neither one lets loose on the camouflage. He hikes back to reading gas meters and she hikes back to the glove stall.
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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
