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Carol M. Sax / passport photograph (AI colorized)
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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).
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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 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
