C A M O U P E D I A

railway car reminiscent of wartime ship camouflage

WAGR Railway Car [AI colorized]
TESTS FOR DIESEL'S SAFETY PAINT, COMMENT WELCOMED, CRISS-CROSS EYE-CATCHER in Northern Times (Camarvon, Western Australia, Australia), March 7, 1947, p. 5—

Following complaints from the country that WAGR [Western Australia Government Railways] cream and green diesel-electric rail cars merged into the countryside background colors, thereby endangering the safety of road travelers at level crossings, a novel attempt is being made to ensure public safety.

Each end of a diesel-electric rail car has been painted with diagonally converging black and white lines, four inches wide, producing a rather startling and bizarre effect reminiscent of ship camouflage during the war [World War II].

While this color scheme certainly detracts from the generally pleasant and smart appearance of the diesel cars, it shows the Railway Department is ready and willing to do all possible for public safety.

[A] Car so painted is under test to ascertain whether it is now more readily visible to country road users when approaching railway crossings and the department will welcome the comments of country residents.

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

WWI blue gray dazzle / daubs of rust appear as blood

SS Ceramic in dazzle camouflage
Above British troop ship SS Ceramic in 1918, at which time it was painted in a dazzle camouflage scheme. It was used again in World War II, during which it was torpedoed and destroyed by a German U-boat in 1942. 656 people were on board, of whom only one survived. A full account of the ship's history can be found in Clare Hardy, SS Ceramic: The Untold Story (2012).

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George Henry Johnston, My Brother Jack. North Ryde, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson, 1990, pp. 3-4—

One recollects something of this later phase [of World War I] in a series of vivid little vignettes that are incomplete and scattered, but bright enough, like the fragments of spilt color I remember strewn on the hall carpet all around the artificial limbs and crutches when the front door slammed in a gusty wind one day and shattered the decorative lead light side panels of red and green and blue and amber glass.

Almost the earliest and yet the clearest of these images is of the troopship Ceramic, with her four rakish masts and her tall tilted smokestack, coming home to the flags and the festoons of garlands and the triumphal arches and the bands playing Sousa marches on the pier at Port Melbourne. The blue-grey abstract dazzle of the camouflage-painting on the steamer's incredibly long, lean hull, although spectacular, came as no surprise to me, but I do remember being astonished by the bright daubs of red lead and the more sanguinary streams of rust streaking down from ports and hawse-hole and scuppers, because I had only visualized the ship before in the gray monotone of a mounted photograph which was kept on top of the piano, together with a hard army biscuit on which was drawn with Indian ink a sketch of a camel and the Sphinx and a palm-tree and the Pyramids and the legend Australian Imperial Forces Cairo New Year 1915. There was no coincidence in the photograph being there on the piano; the Ceramic was the transport that had taken Mother away; the coincidence was that it was the same ship that brought Dad home. Even so, I had not expected the vivid redness of the rust and the red lead, which to my awed childish imagination looked like blood pouring down the ship's side. Perhaps it had been.

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Monday, January 12, 2026

checkerboards, cubes, crosswords and camouflage

Camouflage or crossword?

One wonders if there are historical links between disruptive patterns in camouflage (as in geometric dazzle schemes) and crossword puzzles. If you think of the latter as a pattern of black and white squares, it doesn't take much to see them as related to early kinds of camouflage in which comparable squares were painted on the surfaces of ships (or even fortresses). Those patterns made it confusing to tell which squares were merely painted shapes, and which were cut-out port holes, through which cannons could be fired. We've talked about checkerboard pattern deception more than once, for example here and here.

I was thinking about that recently when I found a source that claimed that the "modern crossword" puzzle (called a "word cross" puzzle at first) was invented in 1913.

That date seems surprisingly recent, and I wonder if it's accurate There had been earlier British attempts in the 19th century, but its US-based originator was a British-born journalist named Arthur Wynne, whose first puzzle appeared in the New York World on December 13, 1913. It was comprised of white squares in which to print the answers, but there were no black ones.

That purported birth year of the crossword puzzle was the same year as the notorious Armory Show in New York, which introduced Cubism, Futurism and other forms of European Modern Art to the American public. It was met with great derision, and for cartoonists it was an occasion to make fun of abstraction using cubes. I wonder if that event (and the riotous joking that followed) was among the factors that fed the popularity of the crossword puzzle. And then of course in the following year, there was the official adoption of wartime camouflage by the French army in World War I, which some people claimed (and many still insist) was a direct off-shoot of Cubism.

By 1920, one year after the war ended, there was what is sometimes called a "Cross Word Craze" which apparently spread into interior design (checkerboard floors)—and camouflage-like clothing design, as shown at the top of this blog post.

Five years later, a book of crossword puzzles came out. Authored by Torquemada (Edward Powys Mathers) and titled Cross-Words in Rhyme for Those of Riper Years, it was published in London by George Routledge and Sons. The style of its cover could no doubt be called "cubist-like. And in subsequent pages, its cleverness goes even further, since it offers crossword puzzles (as shown below), in which the titles and the overall patterns are indicative of the content. One titled The Swan is shaped like a swan, and another is titled Ballet Russe. We've had great fun with the Ballet Russes, as is evident here.

One other detail: As I looked at these pictorial crossword patterns (which look like cross-stitch patterns to me), I was also reminded of vintage newspaper puzzles, including a so-called "cubicow" that we've blogged about before at this link.

Sunday, January 11, 2026

artist, designers, architects in World War II camouflage

Above World War II US Army public relations photograph of a course in ground camouflage at Mitchel Field on Long Island NY. The photograph was issued to news vendors in December 1943. The caption read in part as follows—

At "camouflage college" at Mitchel Field, aviation engineers learn everything that is known about the art of camouflage. There is camouflage for every land and clime and in a global war such as this, the camouflage wardrobe is as extensive as that of any lady of fashion.

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Philip Gerard, Secret soldiers: how a troupe of American artists, designers, and sonic wizards won World War II's battles of deception against the Germans. NYC: Plume, 2003, pp. 7-8—

America has a habit of forgetting the lessons of war during peacetime. Though the US Army had fielded a talented camouflage corps in World War I and learned critical lessons from its British and French counterparts about the practical value of deception on the battlefield, by the time the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, it had all but forgotten them. The whole theory of deception had to be reinvented, and a new generation of men trained to put it into effect in a cataclysmic war.

Wednesday, January 7, 2026

Camouflage Exhibit at Spy Museum Opens in March

Exhibition Catalog Cover

I am pleased that I was asked to write the introduction to the catalog for a major upcoming exhibition at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. Titled Camouflage: Designed to Deceive, the exhibit opens on March 1, 2026, and will remain on view for three years.

The catalog / book can be preordered at online book sites, and tickets are available in advance on the museum's website.

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Tuesday, January 6, 2026

a panoply of cartoonists' views of WWI camouflage

Saturday, January 3, 2026

alas, Grace Ripley's camouflaged gown has arrived

Ruth St. Denis in costume (NYPL)

Anon, "TIS HERE! THE CAMOUFLAGE GOWN! FAIR ARTIST HOOVERIZES DRESS in Oakland Tribune (Oakland CA), September 2, 1927—

It's here!

The "Camouflage Gown," last word in elusiveness, has arrived. It Is women's contribution to the war economics of today. and the first example of "Hooverized dress."

No matter what the fashions may be in the future, the "Camouflage Gown" will never be conspicuous by reason of being "out of style." No matter what women wear, no matter what the modes of the future will bring, the "Camouflage gown" will always be en rapport.

For the "Camouflage gown," according to its inventor, will never go out of style! Fashions may come and fashions may go, but the owner of this latest invention in feminine accoutrement will not have to pay the bill. She'll just don the "camouflage"—and laugh at the madly changing modes!

The "Camouflage gown" is not invisible, like a camouflaged cannon or lamp-post or army mule. It is just invisible as to details, color and beside other gowns. In other words, everything about it is inconspicuous—and it never can be singled out as being different from the rest, though it is.

Miss Grace Ripley [later on the faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design] inventor of, the new gown, is a visitor here after having been for some time past in Los Angeles designing tor Ruth St. Denis. Her home is in Boston, whee she is famous as a designer of wonderful costumes. She is at present at the St. Francis in San Francisco on a visit, and has promised several of the new gowns to local society women.

"A gown can be so perfectly proportioned, following ancient lines," she declares, "by modernizing the old Greek costumes, and so perfectly harmonized in color, that it can never grow out of style. I have been experimenting, and have gowns that have been in fashion for years.

"In this day of conservation I have decided to offer this system of gown design as my contribution to the war program. It women dress less—that is, more cheaply—they can save material and money—and my system will do it without losing them any of their beauty."

RELATED LINKS

Thursday, January 1, 2026

German soldiers unseen except when surrendering

WWI German artillery camouflage using overhead netting
Clair Kenamore, From Vauquois Hill to Exermont; a history of the thirty-fifth division of the United States. St Louis MO: Guard Publishing 1919, p. 111—

The invisibility of the Germans was one of their strong points. Their camouflage was good, and they took advantage of every possibility for concealment. Some of our men never saw a German except those who had surrendered. A typical experience was that of Sergeant C.G. McCorkle of E Company, of the 138th, who fought from the "jumping off" day up to the 29th, when he was wounded, but in all that time he never saw a German with a rifle in his hands. All he saw either had their hands high in the air, surrendering, or were using them to work a machine gun.

RELATED LINKS

irregular streaks of black and white painted across it

Unidentified WWI American ship with dazzle camouflage
Edward Alva Trueblood, In the Flash Ranging Service: Observations of an American Soldier during His Service with the AEF in France. Sacramento CA: News Pub, 1919—

All the boats in our fleet were camouflaged. The King of Italy had great irregular streaks of black and white painted across it. One of the boats in our fleet had a really remarkable picture of a sinking ship painted on its side. Another had two ships painted on its side and was camouflaged to look like two vessels instead of one. While the camouflaged ships appeared strange at first, we soon were used to the unusual appearance, and thought nothing of them. A camouflaged vessel is visible to the naked eye, almost as plain as one that has not been daubed with paint, but it is through the mirrors of a periscope that the camouflage is effective. In reflecting the picture on the horizon, the mirrors lose some of the rays of light, so officers explained to me, hence the eyes of the periscope are unable to detect the camouflage.

RELATED LINKS

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

camouflage egg / do not begrudge conscientious fowl

Grant Wood, The Appraisal (1931)

Anon, HERE AND THERE in Country Life, January 1919—

Just because the hen has somehow gotten the reputation for being a stupid, flighty, indecisive creature is no reason, it appears, for denying her the right to deep-seated likes and dislikes. And sometimes we find these where we would least expect them, as did the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station when it started an investigation into the relative efficiency of different kinds of nest eggs. As a result of exhaustive tests and careful compilation of data, it was found that above all other types of "camouflage egg" the hen prefers one made of plaster of paris; next in order of acceptability come wooden eggs; next after that real eggs; and lowest of all in popularity stand china eggs, probably the best known and most commonly used. By just what means the investigators interpreted the feelings of their subjects in the matter we do not know; nor does it matter. The point is: so long as the material used has no deleterious effect on the food or other value of the ultimate progeny of the bird, why begrudge the industrious, conscientious fowl the greatest possible solace and contentment during those weeks that she spends in calm, contemplative creation!

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE IN THE WOOD in Brecon County Times, Neath Gazette and General Advertiser (Wales), September 7, 1918 (Supplement)—

The drafting of men for military service has brought to light some queer occupations, but surely none more out of the ordinary than that of the man who makes imitation pheasant eggs. A man before a Surrey Tribunal said his job was to make an egg which hoodwinked the sitting pheasant. The real eggs were transferred to a broody hen's keeping until near the time of hatching, and the hen pheasant kept at her job by means of the artificial "eggs." Then the real eggs were brought back to be hatched out by a mother who could look after them. These artificial "eggs," it seems, mislead the hen pheasant entirely, and cause foxes, hedgehogs and such marauders furiously to think. It seems rather like a yarn, but the Tribunal accepted it, and gave the man six months' exemption.

Also see: Mimicry, Metaphor and Mistake

Monday, December 29, 2025

can you find a camouflaged cat / an embedded figure

Above Can you find the camouflaged cat? A Victorian-era puzzle picture from The Strand Magazine.

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Roland Pertwee, "Camouflage" in The Strand Magazine, May 1917, p. 502—

For the benefit of those who may not be acquainted with what camouflage means, it might be truthfully described as a thin veil drawn over great events.

There are endless varieties of camouflage and endless uses to which it may be put. A great white road is concealed from the enemy lines by a hedge of thinly-plaited twigs—camouflage, An observation point hidden in the heart of a haystack—camouflage. A mighty gun masked by an awning of fishermen’s nets sprinkled with dead leaves—camouflage. A corpse brought in from No Man’s Land and replaced by a live man, who watches what is toward in the Hun trenches—again camouflage. But perhaps the subtlest variety of all is the kind that men and women devise to screen their real emotions from each other and the world.