snake-like sinuous piping / Mark Booth camouflage art

Tgrit © Mark Booth 2016

Recently I ran across the artwork of an Australian artist named Mark Booth. In 2021, he completed the research requirements for a Master of Fine Arts degree at The University of New South Wales. His thesis, titled Sculpture as Artifice: Mimetic Form in the Environment, can be found at his website along with detailed images of related projects.

Among the works you’ll find online is the one reproduced above, a sculpture titled Tigrit (2016). It was made from PVC pipe (commonly used for plumbing) which was covered with a camouflage-patterned vinyl wrap, then mounted on a wall, on a background that consists of a flat version of the same disruption scheme.

In his thesis, Booth refers to this and comparable works as “snake-like sinuous piping.” Many of us—presumably most—have a degree of aversion to snakes, and yet they are also astonishing, in part because their complicated patterns interfere effectively with the challenge of tracking their movements.

When I saw this initially, I thought of online images of a venomous gaboon viper reclining on a forest floor in sub-Saharan Africa. I wouldn’t like to step on that. Or, in the ranks of the nonvenomous, one cannot help but be impressed by the bewildering surface designs on ball pythons (called that because, when threatened, they coil up into a tight ball for protection).

But there are other things that also quickly spring to mind when confrontlng Mark Booth’s sculpture. After all, PVC is plumbing pipe, so it hardly surprising to think of the large intestines or the bowels. At that point scatology raises its head, and who knows where that path might lead.

This work also caught my eye because a few years ago, while making a series of digital montages, I inavertently ended up with Wind Instrument (reproduced below), that was probably inspired by the vagaries of bathroom jokes. Alimentary, my dear Watson.

For a closer look at Mark Booth’s work, visit his Instagram account. There is also online a selection of short, informative videos here.

In the meantime, given that this item originates from Australia, perhaps it would be fitting to mention Tasmania, the famed Australian island state. Here is an newspaper clipping, titled "Artists and Camouflage," as published in the Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania), on July 21, 1937—

“The problem of camouflage in war can only be solved with your help,” said Air Chief Marshall Sir Cyril Newall in addressing the painters at the Royal Academy banquet. “It is notable, however, that it is the academic and orthodox artist who is helping. At first glance we should have expected more help from the unorthodox—the surrealists, super-modernists, post-post-impressionists, post-mortem impressionists, or whatever you call them. These artists appear to me, as a layman, to misrepresent rather than represent the subjects they work upon.” 

Wind Instrument © Roy R. Behrens 2022

 

New and Improved Personal Camouflage Methods

Bruce Bairnsfather (c1918)

Above A classic cartoon (c1918) of a dazzle-patterned World War I soldier by British cartoonist and humorist Bruce Bairnsfather.

•••

L.W. LOWER IS A DAB AT COLOR SCHEMES in Daily News (Perth, Western Australia), September 23, 1939, p. 21—

Camouflage classes have been started in the Eastern States [of Australia]. We need them here.

The idea of camouflage is to convince observers that you are not where you are, and not even in any place where you're not.

This will apply mostly to buildings and other structures.

But personal camouflage is another matter.

It will be advisable for citizens to carry a variety of paint pots with them.

For ordinary street wear all that is needed is a pot of paint the same color as the pavement.

At the first sign of danger, the head should be plunged into the paint pot, thus deluding the enemy.

Green paint should be poured over the upper portion of the body when one is in a park.

The addition of a dahlia on top of the head will help.

Motors will find it a simple matter to paint the back of a cow on the roof of cars.

A simpler method is to carry an umbrella which looks from the top like a street man-hole.

All you have to do is to sit in the roadway under the umbrella and look like the entrance to a drain.

To make the thing more realistic you should also feel like the entrance to a drain.

In the meantime I am going to persuade the local publican to allow me to use his cellar as an air-raid shelter, starting from today.

He doesn't seem too willing to collaborate, so far.

Cruise Boat Camouflage | Katy Mutton

Above Australian artist Katy Mutton has undertaken a public art project (concurrent with the World War I Centenary), called In Plain Sight, in which she has designed a glaring dazzle camouflage scheme for a small cruise boat.

Beginning in October 2016 and continuing for a year, the vessel will provide tours on Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra (Australia's famous capital), as part of the Contour 556 Arts Festival. In the artist's words, the project will play up various aspects of stealth and surveillance: "Using bright, bold mixed patterns the transformed vessel will invite attention while simultaneously interfering with the viewer's perception of its form and detail." More>>>

Ship Camouflage | Why Sailors Hate Paint

WWI camouflaged British merchant ship

Above (top) Port and (bottom) starboard views of the SS Hunnie, a dazzle-camouflaged World War I British merchant ship (c1918). The original photographs, made by Allan C. Green, are in the collection of the Victoria State Library AU.

•••

Day Russell, SAILORS HATE PAINT (short story) in The Sydney Morning Herald (April 23, 1946), p. 10—

“It’s like this,” began the sailor, “The old tub, she’s one of these passenger ships in peace time and they converts her to a troopship. Have you ever stopped to think how much paint it takes to cover the sides of one of them ships? No, you ‘aven’t. Well, some blokes had to fight their way through the war, and it seems that my pal Nobby and me had to paint our way through it. We did nothink but hang like flies on the side of a skyscraper, sitting on a bit of a plank with a bucket of paint and brush staring at them great walls of old iron; iron to the right of you, iron to the left of you, iron all round you, till if you’re a soft-skinned bloke like Nobby, it gets into your soul, if you understand me.

We gets aboard ‘er, Nobby and me, and the first thing that ‘appens is all ‘ands paint ship. That seems to take fifty years and then there comes an order which says there’s to be a new kind of camouflage and so it’s paint ship again, and by the time we gets that done we don’t know whether it’s us or the ship that’s cross-eyed, or whether we’re coming or going…

[Later, in another port] there comes along some admiral who doesn’t like the look of our camouflage and ‘e wants a few touches here and there to make us look like we was three ships and not one, so Nobby and me ‘as to go over the side again for a couple of weeks.… 

Dazzle-Painted Ship Models in Australia

Dazzle-painted ship models AU National Maritime Museum

There is a selection of wonderful blog posts from 2014 that we've only recently happened upon. They were posted on the blog of the Australian National Maritime Museum, which is in Sydney Harbor, and in fact we've actually visited there. 

One of the posts, titled When in doubt, Razzle Dazzle them, includes a wonderful WWI photograph of the HMT Zealandia, adorned in striped dazzle paint. 

Two other posts, called Dazzle ship models and A dazzling connection with WWI, feature the work of museum model maker Col Gibson, who rebuilt models of some of the ships, and whose father actually served on a dazzle-painted transport ship during that war. See above models in process. 

As discussed in four blog posts, including a longer, more recent one on WWI dazzle, art and fashion, dazzle-painting was widely adopted, not only for ship camouflage, but throughout popular culture as well. All this is also featured in an ongoing exhibition, titled War at Sea: The Navy in WWI, which is touring through Australia until March 2018. Wish we had seen it while visiting there.

Blog post detail from AU National Maritime Museum

DAZZLE | The Hidden Story of Camouflage

Dazzle: The Hidden Story of Camouflage

Above Coming soon is a wonderful Australian documentary called DAZZLE: The Hidden Story of Camouflage, produced by Jonnie & Kate Films.The updated trailer is online here.

•••

 Anon, WILL BE A CAMOUFLEUR: Harry D. Mapes May See Service in France Before Long, in the Ottawa Herald (Ottawa KS), March 13, 1918. p. 1—

Ottawa may soon have a representative in the ranks of the camoufleurs in France. Harry D. Mapes, now piano player at the Star theater, recently applied to the war department for enlistment in that service and has received word that, although there is not an opening now, he may be called in the near future.

Camoufleurs are the men who belong to the camouflage companies. It is their duty to conceal batteries of artillery and the like. Batteries sometimes are painted so that the colors will blend with the landscape. To deceive the enemy by making objects less conspicuous is the camoufleur's work. Mr. Mapes has been a painter.

Everett Warner WWI ship model (two views of same)

additional sources

Ann Elias on Flowers and Australian Art

Cover of Ann Elias, Useless Beauty (2015)

Art historian Ann Elias, Associate Professor of Theoretical Enquiry at the Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney AU, is well-known for her writings on art and camouflage. Now she has produced a book (see cover above) about aspects of the significance of the representation of flowers in art, and especially Australian art. Titled Useless Beauty: Flowers and Australian Art (UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), go online here to find out more. Below are two recent statements about this thoughtful, interesting book.

Professor Ted Snell, AM CitWA, Director, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia—

Ann Elias convincingly argues for the "useless beauty" of flowers and their significance in constructing a comprehensive and inclusive record of the art of Australia. Dancing elegantly through history to elucidate the role of flowers in imparting complex narratives of social life, celebrations, remembrance, attitudes to death, notions of gender, sexuality and cultural difference, she covers a wide territory with elegance and precision. Underlying her thesis is a deeper question about beauty and whether there is value in attending to its undoubted allure when making art, about flowers or anything else. The many illustrations prove her point.

Professor Su Baker, Director, Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), University of Melbourne—

Who would think the flower painting genre could tell such a dynamic history of western art and elucidate the contradictions, social and political conditions of Australian culture. Through this clear and very readable account of the flower painting traditions in Australia, Ann Elias reveals the way these forms of "useless beauty" give us insights into the moral and aesthetic polemics, the anxieties, desire, ambitions and aspirations of Australasian art and culture. This book takes us on a journey through the 20th century, recalling the roots of European traditions, the measures of taste and beauty that were dominant allegories for good living. Elias outlines the gendered political separation of art (useless beauty) and science, the true nature of things.  All the more surprising is that artists such as Tom Roberts, George Lambert, Hans Heysen and Arthur Streeton gave such serious attention to the motif of the flower. We hear from Elias her rich insight and the many examples of the work of these heroic Australian painters, and see the care with which they attended to these gentle subjects. 

Camouflage Skirts: A Sartorial Disaster

Rebecca Palmer (1884), Crazy Quilt

Above An example of a crazy quilt, made with silk and velvet by Rebecca Palmer (1884). Collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Image from Wikipedia Commons.

When Cubist artworks were first exhibited in the US at the Armory Show in New York (1913), followed by the wartime adoption of dazzle painting for ship camouflage (1917), the public compared them to the crazy quilts at county fairs.

•••

Anon, in “Perth Prattle,” Sunday Times (Perth, Western AU), Sunday, June 2, 1918, p. 15—

The “camouflage” skirt is here, writes “Lady Kitty” in the Adelaide Observer. The cretonne skirt is a sartorial disaster. There is not an article in the whole of ones wardrobe that could possibly “go” with the skirt. It made its first appearance in Sydney, where six and eight guineas were asked—and given—for these camouflage skirts. They are of silk, but such silk! It is most suitably called “crazy.” This demented silk starts at being a wonderful pattern in colors which absolutely pale the gorgeousness of all Eastern color magnificence, when suddenly it is camouflaged with great patches of dullish background. Most weird. Camouflage, you know, is to make things appear other than what they really are—to disguise them, in fact, so that the crazy silk sets out to be a very striking fabric which it is suddenly camouflaged by broad strips of plain color which quite disguise its original identity, but really make it more striking still. Camouflage parties, at which people wear camouflaged fancy dress, have become quite a rage for funding-raising purposes; and if guests are ingenious enough the result is screamingly funny. 

•••

Anon, in The Week, The World’s News (Sydney NSW), Saturday, April 13, 1918, p. 14—

Dame Fashion is a fool, and that is putting it mildly. She decrees that women must adopt camouflage for their dress. What need is there for any such thing? Hasn’t woman camouflaged ever since Eve took Adam in over the apple? Of course she has, and will continue to do it just whenever it suits her ideas. If she wants to win a post that wheedling won’t accomplish, she camouflages her face with tears, and lo, she arrives at the desired end. And what she can do with rouge and powder passes all understanding. It is camouflage carried to a fine art. What man could tell that the short-frocked, finely-complexioned, sixteen-year-old hatted person at a distance was over forty and the mother of six? This is camouflage, and with a vengeance, and yet Fashion wants to add to it by use of dresses. If it means that plain cotton stuff at 1s 2d the yard, six yards for 6s 6d, can be so faked by the skillful dressmaker as to appear like a silk confection at a guinea a yard, by all means camouflage. But if it means turning a probable ten-guinea costume into a twenty-pounder, then camouflage is a miserable failure. Everything depends upon what that fickle jade, Fashion, is after. Usually she strives to deplete the purse of the hard-working husband or father, but if in this case, as in the case of ships, the object is to save—then camouflage for ever.

Harlequin Crew | Inadvertent Camouflage Plan

Dazzle-camouflaged SS Australford (c1918)

Above (top) Port side and (bottom) starboard view of the SS Australford, a British Commonwealth cargo ship (c1918). Lower on this page is a starboard view of the SS City of Karachi, British Commonwealth transport ship (c1918). The original photographs, made by Allan C. Green, are in the collection of the Victoria State Library AU.

•••

Dion Clayton Calthrop, CAMOUFLAGE ABSOLUTE: Ship That Wasn’t There; Sailed with Harlequin Crew, in Queensland Times (Ipswich, Queensland AU), May 28, 1918, p. 6—

[In a shipboard conversation between Captains Holloway and Mason, the latter says] “…You remember last Thursday, when it was blowing up for dirty weather?”

“I was two hours overdue,” said Holloway.

“I was just about to turn in in to get a snooze before sailing in the morning when the officer in charge came aboard and says to me, ‘Mason,’ he says, ‘you’ve got to find room for Major Dash and his gear.’ That’s correct, ain’t it, Herbert?”

“The very words,” said he.

“Hell, I was full up in the hold and I’d got some goods stowed away on deck, and I tell you I was fair horrified when the major stepped into the light and says to me, ‘Captain,’ he says, ‘I’m a camouflage officer, and I’m just bringing by paints and canvas along with me.’ And there, sure enough, was about twenty kegs of paint on the quayside, and a great bundle of canvas. However, what with a war on and all that, I merely says ‘Yes, sir,’ and got the hands to work fixing these blistering kegs on deck and getting the gear stowed away snug and shipshape.”

“Twenty kegs?” said Holloway.

“Of paint.”

“Bad luck for a keg to come so low as paint,” said Holloway. “I’ve carried lily bulbs and parasols and dried cuttlefish in the China seas but never paint.”

“It was blowing nearly a gale, nor’ by nor’-east most of the night,” the skipper went on, “and, though the wind dropped towards daybreak, there was plenty of sea running. However, I had some stuff to get across, and out we went. The major was full of pluck, and stood it for the first hour, and then his face went all colors till it got blue, and then he gave it up…”

“I’ve seen them like that,” said Holloway.

“I’ve been like it once,” said Mason, “but I put it down to pork chops and stout followed by jam roll, but that’s neither here nor there. What happened next gave me the regular jumps. Them kegs [of camouflage paint] broke away, and then the fun began. One keg bashed up against another keg, and after a time when they was pounding away on deck they began to leak. Old man, it was awful, but it pulled the major together, and we got all hands what could be spared to lash ‘em up fast again. We done that, but the damage was done, and I believe the major would have cried if he’d been alone, not feeling strong at the time. The men was blue and green and yellow. I had one red boot and one purple arm. As for the major—well, if a rainbow could swear, that’s what he was. Lord, I did envy him his education.”

“And a gale blowing at the time?” said Holloway, incredulously.

“Hurricane,” said Mason…

“And the ship?”

“Camouflaged herself proper. Decks swimming with paint of all colors, and the paint streaming over the sides. Why, we was so invisible I could hardly see the ship myself. Come into port with one boat on the port side stove in and the men like a pack of harlequins. Took me and Herbert all our time rubbing each other down so’s we wouldn’t look like a sea-circus.”

“What did the major do?” asked Holloway.

“Him? He was a rare good ‘un. He finished the job when we fetched up our moorings. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘I’m a superstitious man,’ he said, ‘and what Nature bean I’ll finish.’ And he done it.”

Holloway turned his eye seawards, and let his gaze rest over the crowded harbor. In the panorama before him were troopships, destroyers, lighters, mine-sweepers, motor boats, and fishing xxxx, with an airplane overhead.

“Your boat there?” he asked.

“She’s there,” Mason replied. “But you’ll never see her. She’s so camouflaged, she’s lost. I can’t see her with nothing but a kaleidoscope.…”

Dazzle-camouflaged SS City of Karachi (c1918), starboard

 

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Bewildering Stripes in Ship Camouflage

Above (top) Starboard side view and port side view (bottom) of the SS Orissa, a British Commonwealth steam ship (c1918) in striped zébrage camouflage. A third view is at the bottom of this page. The original photographs, made by Allan C. Green, are in the collection of the Victoria State Library AU.

•••

Norman Wilkinson, "Dazzle Painting of Ships" in The Nautical Gazette (September 13, 1919), p. 177—

Some time before the end of the war we had arrived at the striped type of design [for ship camouflage] which was the most successful type. These striped designs were commented on by a great number of seamen as being by far the best for upsetting the calculation of a ship's course.

•••

Rudolf Arnheim, Parables of Sun Light (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)—

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not matter to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.

Warship Camouflage as House Painting

SS Polladern (c1918) in dazzle camouflage

Above Port side view of the SS Polladern, a British Commonwealth cargo ship (c1918). The original photograph, made by Allan C. Green, is in the collection of the Victoria State Library AU.

•••

John A. Smith, ARTISTS AT SEA: House Painters Protect Ocean Life Lines in Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Queensland AU), April 17, 1939, p. 3—

Amongst the preparations against a possible war made by the Government are arrangements for every ship to be "dazzle painted" within a few hours. Landlubbers believe that ships are camouflaged in wartime in order to reduce their visibility. But a vessel camouflaged in the modern manner screams for attention. Its enemies, the submarines, cannot help but see it. It achieves a degree of safety not by becoming invisible, but by a more subtle method. There is a world of difference between the approach of the camouflage artist to the problems of a fixed object such as an aerodrome or a gun battery and of a sea-going vessel. The roofs of military aerodromes today are painted in order to make them blend as far as possible with the surrounding country. But when the artist attacks the sides of a liner with his air sprays and brushes his object is to make the commander of an enemy aircraft unable to believe his own eyes! "Dazzle-painting" is a more correct name than camouflage for the art as used on the sea; it is the term which was generally adopted before the Great War came to an end. 

…The mechanics of "dazzle-painting" were practically identical with those of mural decoration and scene painting, and hundreds of men who in civil life had followed these and similar crafts—including house painters—were enrolled at Devonport and hoisted like flies over the sides of sample vessels. They worked under the direction of naval officers and draughtsmen. They had the right to feel important for on the results of their work depended ocean-going mechanical miracles aggregating in value millions of pounds, the safety of thousands of lives, and the supply arteries of Allied forces.

Robert Gibbings (1921), The House Painters

Anon, "Compendium of Foreign Phrases" in Lansing Warren, En Repos and Elsewhere Over There: Verses Written in France, 1917-1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918, p. 105—

The last place for a real artist is in the camouflage department. What is needed is a good cubist or futurist, or, in the finest and most delicate work, a house painter.

additional sources

What Was It Like To Paint A Ship In Camouflage?

Above Port side (top) and starboard side of the SS War Magpie, a British cargo ship, painted in dazzle camouflage. The designs on the ship's two sides are deliberately different, in the hope of increasing  confusion and preventing identification, when viewed through a U-boat periscope. The original photographs, made c1919 by Allan C. Green, are in the collection of the Victoria State Library AU. When ship camouflage was first applied, the colors were vivid and sharply defined, but after a few months at sea, it began to deteriorate, as is evident here.

•••

What was it like to paint a ship in camouflage? We've seen a handful of photographs of ship camoufleurs at work. And now and then we've run across brief eyewitness memories of the process of actually painting a ship. But the following is the most detailed account we've found so far. Its American author is not credited, but it is stated that the essay first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor. We found it in reprinted form in THE WHY AND HOW OF DAZZLE in The Daily News (Perth, Western Australia), May 19, 1919, p. 4—

They certainly did look strange, those ships; patched and lined, like grandmother's crazy quilt with broad black, white and blue bands and stripes, gray, green, and almost every color save the mythical sky-blue-pink.

Passengers on the ferries lined the rails and made many and varied comments on their strange appearance.…

Painting a ship is very simple—theoretically—just take a brush and paint and "go to it"—just like that. Of course we [American ship camoufleurs] had a plan, a design furnished by the Navy Department, which showed a view of the two sides of the ship (the sides were different, by the way), and a husky gang of painters, but ship painting is different from painting a house; much larger, oh vastly.

When we first stood under the bows of a newly launched tank steamer and looked up at her, she was an appalling thing to a novice. Thirty-five feet out of water the bow towered, a sheer wall of steel, flaring outward at the top to make it doubly difficult. On that curving rampart we had to make accurate lines in curves, and beautiful parabolas (I think that is the word). At any rate, I would have given the old family clock and all my loose change just that minute for a pair of foot warmers.

It wasn't so bad after we started, though the first ship was far from a model. Slinging stages over the bow, we put two painters on them with poles and chalk, and by gestures and megaphoned instructions from the wharf had them spot in points on the curves and connect them.•

It is quite impossible, unless one is highly experienced, to draw these curves and lines when standing close to the ship. One needs to be 100 feet away properly to judge the proportion; and the effectiveness of the design depends largely on its accuracy. Later we learned to use a mirror, flashing the spots on the side one after the other along the course of a curve, and stretching a long chalk line for the straights snapped by a man in the center. Sometimes we used long "battens," strips of thin board, bending them to the proper curve, and a 20-foot fish pole with a brush on the tip helped to strike in the more complicated forms. Strange as it may seem, the hardest forms to apply to a ship are long parallel straight lines which converge to points near bow or stern. For some reason we never could seem to get the angles just right. 

It was no place for a dainty man, when working on the floats alongside, for a rain of things descended on us. Bolts, hot rivets, scraps of iron, and heavier things like lumps of wood and heavy pieces of rope, when working in the shipyards, come down at unexpected intervals. No use yelling up at the man on the deck to be careful—with 500 men hammering and drilling and reaming, conversation is at a discount. You can only dodge and grin cheerfully at the painters.

Then again tugs and steamers have a way of pulling a heavy wash into the slips when one is on a high staging 12 feet or so above the water. The float rocks violently without the slightest warning, and if you have not fallen overboard at the first roll you drop on your hands and knees and grip until the float is fairly still again. When this is past, and you are congratulating yourself, some enthusiastic painter tips over his pail of dark blue, or whatever color he happens to be using, directly above you, perhaps, or the cook happens to think of some refuse that needs disposing of, and then there are holes in the side of the ship where water—hot or cold—pops out without any warning. A camoufleur is not a camoufleur unless he falls overboard regularly once a week.

Still it was a great game while it lasted, taken with the interesting experimental work on little models in a mechanical theatre with a sea foreground and a painted strip to imitate sky—this in the intervals of ship painting. The dazzle painted ships are now fast disappearing under their peace coats of gray. May they never again need the services of American camoufleurs.

• This method of initially putting in dots, then connecting them, is comparable to pouncing, a technique used by artists for transferring a design from one surface to another.

more info

WW1 Camouflaged Misogyny—After a Fashion

Civilian examples of camouflage (1917)

Above Camouflage and fashion cartoon (digitally restored) from The Ogden Standard (Ogden UT), December 3, 1917, p. 11.

•••

Anon, CONEY ISLAND WAR THRILLS in The World's News (Sydney AU), August 23, 1919, p. 19—

Americans are experiencing many thrills of near participation in the war this summer. A great number of novel reproductions of action along the battle fronts, in the air, and at sea, are to be seen at Coney Island (New York) and similar holiday resorts.

…A popular device…is called "Treat 'em rough," which was the motto of the American Tank Corps during the war. Patrons are strapped in seats and sent through an extraordinary series of up and down and sidewise motions that only the strongest constitutions can successfully stand. This new "stunt" is advertised as guaranteed to reduce fat and put anybody in trim for an army career.

Coney Island is attempting daring water novelties this summer in the form of bathing suits for feminine wear, consisting of single-piece garments with zigzag stripes. They are called "camouflage suits"—because it is so difficult to see them.

•••

Anon, from BRITISH AND FOREIGN in Alburry Banner and Wodonga Express (New South Wales AU), August 8, 1919, p. 35—

Girls so cleverly camouflaged that it was difficult for the audience to tell whether they were looking at the faces or the backs of the girls, greatly amused the Queen [of England] who attended an exhibition of drill given them at the Savoy Hotel, London, on a recent occasion.

•••

From the Melbourne Punch (Victoria AU), May 16, 1918, p. 32—

A lately returned traveler from Sydney tells us we are awfully dull down here—that life up there is so Continental it is dine out at some hotel or restaurant (of which there are many to choose from) every evening, wearing a whitewash complexion, watermelon lips, a camouflage skirt, and the merest whisper of a dinner blouse; then on to a theatre; thence to a cocktail supper.

•••

Anon, from THE WEEK in The World's News (Sydney AU), April 13, 1918, p. 14—

Dame Fashion is a fool, and that is putting it mildly. She decrees that women must adopt camouflage for their dress. What need is there for any such thing? Hasn't woman camouflaged ever since Eve took Adam in over the apple? Of course she has, and will continue to do it just whenever it suits her ideas. If she wants to win a post that wheedling won't accomplish, she camouflages her face with tears, and lo, she arrives at the desired end. And what she can do with rouge and powder passes all understanding. It is camouflage carried to a fine art. What man could tell that the short-frocked, finely-complexioned, sixteen-year-old hatted person at a distance was over forty and the mother of six? That is camouflage, and with a vengeance, and yet Fashion wants to add to it by use on dresses. If it means that plain cotton stuff at 1s 2d the yard, six yards for 6s 6d, can be so faked by the skillful dressmaker as to appear like a silk confection at a guinea a yard, by all means camouflage. But if it means turning a probable ten-guinea costume into a twenty-pounder, then camouflage is a miserable failure. Everything depends upon what that fickle jade, Fashion, is after. Usually she strives to deplete the purse of the hardworking husband or father, but if in this case, as in the case of ships, the object is to save—then camouflage for ever.

More on Camoufleur Frederick J. Waugh

Frederick J. Waugh, SS West Mahomet (ship and model) (c1919)

Above (top) More persuasive evidence of the ingenuity of American ship camouflage artist Frederick Judd Waugh. This is his design for the camouflage of the starboard side of the SS West Mahomet, and below that is Waugh's hand-painted model. Note how improvisational the model is, making use of nails and other cast-off scraps.

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE in the Wanganui Chronicle (New Zealand), February 7, 1918, p. 4—

…Visitors to Wellington—or even Castlecliff during the past few days—may have seen excellent examples of the art of camouflage, big liners looking extremely weird with extraordinary markings. These are designed to make the ships poor targets for submarine gunners, the markings deceiving the eye to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish ship from water. Wonderful are the uses of camouflage, not in the sphere of war alone, but in all phases of life! For, after all, does not camouflage play a very large part in the daily round? We see it everywhere. We laugh at our neighbor's little deceit—which after all only deceives himself—quite oblivious of our neighbor's chuckle regarding our own little tricks. Some uses of camouflage are amusing; some pathetic. The ass which donned the lion's skin was not so stupid as the man or woman who, by means of powder, hair, or clothes, tries to make the world believe Time has treated him or her as it does the ocean. The middle-aged woman cannot become a young girl by donning the dress of a young girl; and the middle-aged man cannot become a boy by trundling a hoop in the street. They may—and often do—deceive some people for a time, but sooner or later the camouflage is penetrated and the truth stands revealed. Is the deception worthwhile? Nobody—least of all those who practice it—will say so. Then, in the commercial and social sphere, camouflage plays its part, the users fondly believing that they are deceiving the world at large regarding their position and prospects. And, be it admitted, very often their belief is well grounded! But there is always the fear that some accident may break down the camouflage, and the constant guard against that disaster keeps the user on the rack.

Frederick J. Waugh painting a ship model (c1919)

Anon, RED RAIN FALLS IN SALE: Curious Effect on Countryside, in Gippsland Times (Gippsland, Victoria AU), November 16, 1944, p. 1—

During Sunday night and the early part of Monday, dust-impregnated rain [called "red rain" or "blood rain"] fell throughout the whole district. Residents were amazed on emerging from their homes to discover that everything which came within range of vision, appeared to have changed color overnight.

…The effect was incongruous. Where the rain has missed, dry dust lay. Where the rain had fallen, splotchy marks were left. The entire effect was as though some crazy camouflage artist had executed an ultra futuristic design.

other sources

Hen House Camouflage | World War 1

Fox and hounds—and chickens (1917)

Above (top) The US entered World War 1 in 1917. In advance of that, a group of American artists organized a group they called the New York Camouflage Corps. Later, when the Army officially formed a camouflage corps, various publicity photos were sent to news agencies throughout the country, for the public's amusement and morale. This was one of them. It documents a silly attempt by a misguided amateur camoufleur to soften the visual distinction between a hen house and a farmyard. (bottom) When news of this absurdity reached the UK, Irish cartoonist and Olympic medalist Jack B. Yeats (the younger brother of poet William Butler Yeats), who signed his drawings as "W. Bird," suggested that the same device might scare off the fox from the hen house. It was published in Punch (August 22, 1917, p. 127) with the caption: A poultry-fancier, hearing that defenses at the Front are sometimes disguised as hen houses, determined to reverse the process. Being a bit of an artist he disguised his hen house by giving it a warlike appearance. The enemy was stricken with panic.

• Our thanks to Richard Hawkins for supplying additional info.

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Anon in CAMOUFLAGE in the Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal (New South Wales AU), July 31, 1942, p. 2—

Camouflage is the art of making the other chap think he sees something that isn't there by making the thing he imagines is there to be the thing he assumes isn't there. This principle holds good for all branches of camouflage, like the wife conjuring a new hat out of the household bills, or her mother disguising herself as a welcome guest.

However, not till one joins the army does one realize what real camouflage means. A complete division once camouflaged itself so successfully in a 10-acre paddock that two other divisions camped on the spot without suspecting anything amiss till their beer and tobacco began to vanish.

Other examples of perfect camouflage are making restful ease look like hard yakks, tossing the brown as air-spotting, and using tram tickets as 14-day passes. If a "shrewd head" is sufficiently adept he can camouflage himself as a neatly folded blanket and spend a peaceful day in the tent. Our sergeant cook is an adept at camouflaging old boots as beefsteak.

There appears to be a great future for camouflage. The man who discovered a satisfactory way of camouflaging water as beer and vice versa for after hours will die honored by millions. And perhaps some genius may arise who can even camouflage Eddie Ward [Australian politician] to look like something useful.

Dazzle-Camouflaged Zebra

Above World War I-era cartoon by George Morrow, published in Punch magazine, April 7, 1915, p. 280. The caption reads: REMARKABLE CASE OF PROTECTIVE COLORING. Owing, it is believed, to the fears of a German invasion, a zebra at the zoo assumes a neutral aspect.

• Protectively colored (in "stars and stripes") from a British point of view, presumably because the US was still neutral in the war.

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Anon, CONTEMPORARY CAMOUFLAGE in The Catholic Press (Sydney AU), January 17, 1924, p, 51—

Son: "Is it true about the ass disguising himself with a lion's skin?"

Father: "So the fable goes; but now the colleges do it with a sheep skin."

Dazzle Balls and Cricketeers

Cartoon by Tom Cottrell in Punch (1919)

Above In early 1919, with the end of the Great War at hand, increased coverage was allowed of the wartime use of dazzle-painting for ship camouflage. Dazzle patterns became immensely popular, particularly in women's bathing attire, and costume party outfits. In this cartoon by Tom Cottrell from the British magazine Punch (January 22, 1919, p. 59), it was suggested that a "brighter cricket" might result from the adoption of dazzle-painted sports uniforms.

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In the winter of 1917, US Army camoufleurs held a Camoufleurs' Ball at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC, an event that was attended by President Woodrow Wilson. On March 12, 1919 (as featured in an earlier post) the Chelsea Arts Club held a colorful costume party, called a Dazzle Ball, on March 12, 1919, at Royal Albert Hall in London. A comparable celebration, also called a Dazzle Ball, took place seven months later in Sydney AU, on the night of October 7, 1919. The Sydney event, the purpose of which was a fundraiser for the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, was glowingly reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on the following day, October 8, 1919, in DAZZLE BALL: A WONDERFUL SCENE IN TOWN HALL. Here are two excerpts—

Dazzle Ball! It was indeed. The like of it has never been seen in Sydney before. It was a riotous profusion, a bewildering confusion, of whirling life and color, a wonderful picture that shimmered and glistened wherever you looked. The floor, reflecting the whirling feet and costumes of a thousand hues as in a mirror, was thronged…

The ball was a dazzling mass of color even without the dancers and the beautiful fancy sets. The whole of the balustrading and the pillars were blotted out with drapings camouflaged in all colors of the rainbow, arranged not to give harmonious effects, but just the reverse—to give out a great riotous jumble of colors to make it all look bizarre. Take the mind back to any one of the strangest-looking of the camouflaged ships that came into the harbor during the war, try to conceive of an even more extraordinary jumble of colors, and you have an idea of the setting for the Dazzle Ball…