Frederick Pawla / an unknown artist and camoufleur

Pawla, the surname of British-born American artist Frederick Alexander Pawla (1876-1964), rhymes with Paula. Not surprisingly, it is often incorrectly spelled. That is probably one of the reasons why his contributions to ship camouflage during World War I are largely unacknowledged, although they were considerable.

As one source claims, Pawla was a “highly important” ship camoufleur for the US during World War I, but his name is now “largely forgotten.” There are US government documents in which Pawla is credited with having produced the “dazzle camouflage” designs for various ships, but the credit is all but deflected because he is mistakenly listed as Paula, not Pawla. More>>>

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