WWI woman camoufleur Margaret Anthony Young

Until recently, I don’t think I had heard of an American industrial / interior designer named Margaret Anthony Young. Originally from Jacksonville FL, she studied Applied Design at Pratt Institute in New York (1913-15), and at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design (now affiliated with George Washington University) in Washington DC (1916-17). She also studied with the American Impressionist painter William von Schlegell, and worked as a designer for Herter Looms, a famous tapestry and textile design firm that was founded in 1909 by Albert Herter.

This is of particular interest here because Margaret Young is said to have served in the Camouflage Corps of the US Navy, in 1917-18 as a Yeoman First Class. That claim is surprising because we have often written about the limited participation of American women in WWI camouflage (including naval camouflage). We’ve also produced a video talk, and curated an exhibition (see view of entrance banner above) on the same subject. 

But we’ve never run across a navy camoufleur named Margaret Anthony Young. At the same time, we probably shouldn’t be surprised. Very few women were permitted to serve in other than civilian positions (women were still unable to vote), and we do have several photographs of unidentified women working in the Design Subsection at US Navy headquarters in Washington DC. Beginning in 1926, Young was the owner of The Little Gallery in Jacksonville, while also working as an interior designer. In the 1946 edition of Who’s Who in America, she is listed as the second wife of academic administrator Milton Haight Turk.

camouflage application / women's limited capabilities

Above This an oddity, to be sure. I'm uncertain where I found it, but I do know that the original photograph (grayscale only, but misleadingly AI-colorized here) was published in The American Machinest (c1918), with the photo caption of "The finished product—American made gun and tractor—Detroit, Mich." The original image is an elongated horizontal, but, in order to show it in detail here, I have sliced it into three parts and stacked the sections. The article which it illustrates describes the process by which the camouflage design was applied to the tractor, which had been driven into a "camouflage room," where it was initially assumed that only men (not women) would be capable of painting the pattern. The article goes on to say—

Here a process never before used was applied. Paint guns had been used for the two coats of olive drab, but it did not stop at that point. One man marked off the camouflage design with chalk and marked each recess with the numbers 1, 2 or 3, number 1 being green, number 2 buff, and number 3 yellow. Each painter was given a number—1, 2 or 3.  Number 1, using green paint, painted every place on the tractor that was marked 1, while number 2, using buff, filled in every place marked 2, and 3 proceeded in like manner. After the first few tractors had been run through in this manner, it was found that women could do this work as well as men, and women were hired, relieving the men for heavier work. The black striping was done by a man at the end of the paint line. The total time required for assembling armor, tool box and camouflaging was one hour.

Camouflage Cartoons Archive online at ScholarWorks

Online Camouflage Cartoons Archive

How wonderful! I couldn’t be more pleased with the latest efforts of the ScholarWorks staff at the University of Northern Iowa’s Rod Library. For decades, while I was researching the subject of art and camouflage (both zoological and military), I also gradually built up a collection of camouflage-themed cartoons, especially those that date from before, during and after World War I. Because of concurrent events at the time, the cartoons sometimes also comment on the Armory Show, Women’s Suffrage, and Prohibition. The Rod Library has now posted this collection online as a Camouflage Cartoons Archive. My own particular favorites are those of Maurice Ketten.

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 /  

ScholarWorks / American Women Camouflage Exhibit

UNI ScholarWorks Exhibit

Five years ago, in 2017, I curated an exhibition of historic government photographs, having to do with the role of American women during World War I, in the development of camouflage. 

The exhibition, consisting of forty vintage photographs, and titled HIDDEN FIGURES, premiered in a multiple-month exhibit at the Betty Strong Encounter Center and Sioux City Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, in Sioux City IA.

The photographs in the exhibition, supplemented by text captions, have recently been posted on the ScholarWorks website of the Rod Library at the University of Northern Iowa. 

The activities of these women camoufleurs, as well as their connections to the Womens’ Suffrage Movement, are also featured in a recently completed documentary video (free here online), called Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage, and in a scholarly essay titled Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of World War I Ship Camouflage (available online also).