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

skilled cosmetic camouflage / disguised injured optics

James Montgomery Flagg (1905)

Above James Montgomery Flagg (best-known for his I Want You Uncle Sam poster), Cover illustration (with embedded figure or visual pun) for Life magazine, March 23, 1905.

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Abel Warshawsky, The memories of an American Impressionist. Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1980, p. 30—

One Sunday, when as usual we were on our way to dine at the Kroll’s house, Leon Kroll surprised us by revealing an unsuspected side of his character. We were passing through a tough neighborhood after a heavy fall of snow, when we came upon a band of young roughs mercilessly pelting an old man with snowballs. When we tried to interfere, the band of hooligans turned on us, and we were obliged to make a fight for it. Kroll, who was of small physioque, was our first casualty. An old shoe, hitting him on the head, bowled him over down the area steps where we had taken our stand. In a moment, he was back, blazing with the lust of battle, a veritable David ready to slay his tens of thousands. His onset was so terrific that the enemy was soon put to flight. But there were several black eyes among us to tell the tale of the Sunday battle, and that evening we were to attend a concert! How to save our telltale faces! It was then we remembered the lower Bowery expert who painted out black eyes, and we proceeded to do likewise, so successfully that no one that evening or the next day noticed the traces of our combat.

Above Anon, detail from a cartoon from The Ogden Standard (Ogden UT), December 3, 1917, p. 11.

George Ross, BLACK EYE CAMOUFLAGE ARTIST TELLS MR. ROSS TWO OUT OF TEN ‘PATIENTS’ ARE WOMEN, in Times Daily (Florence AL), September 21, 1939—

NEW YORK, September 22, 1939—“Doctor” Edward Xiques, an amiable Greek who plies his practice amidst the flop houses on the Bowery, hums “Ch’ chonya” with amusement in his voice. “Ch” chonya” is Russian for “dark eyes” and the song, there, is a musical trademark for Dr. Xiques’ craft. He happens to be the only healer and camouflager of black eyes in the city. Or as his own business card promises, “Black eyes painted natural!”

And business has been rather good lately, As you might surmise, not the bulk of Dr. Xiqies’ trade stems from the flop houses in the nondescript Bowery, but from uptown where vanity is fancied.

He speaks smugly of the folk who have come down in expensive cars from Park Avenue to have shiners camouflaged, and he likes to tell about the silk-sheathed beauties who sneak down to his atelier to have a few bruises and a wounded optic well disguised.

As a matter of fact, two out of ten patients are women. That will give you some idea of the status of chivalry in Manhattan. In a specialized occupation like Dr. Xiques,’ discretion is the better part of valor. For example, he has never smiled when the patient explained that the bedpost, the doorknob or the phone receiver hit him. And he is resigned to the slamming taxi door, also. For save in the cases of unabashed pugilists, none of his patients have ever confessed to being the receiving end of a bare fist.

Disguising a black eye is anart with an orthodox background; the secret has been in Dr. Xiques’ family for three generations—but he is the last, probably, who ever will pursue it. After he bows out, folks will have to go back to raw beefsteaks, through Dr. Xiqus frowns upon a prime cut as an effective curative. He says you may as well decorate a black eye with a filet mignon or entrecote!

hollywood trompe l'oeil / catastrophic film tomfoolery

MOVIE CAMOUFLAGE DRIVES CAT CRAZY in Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Pittsburgh PA), February 24, 1944—

Camouflage experts of the cinema industry had an alley cat going crazy recently.

They had constructed a backing for a set being used in Paramount’s Ministry of Fear… The garden depicted a garden scene with a wall painted at one end.

Into the scene strayed one of the cats which has made Paramount its home. Frightened by the sudden booming voice of C[ecil] B. DeMille over a public address systems, the cat took off, intending to clear the wall in a mighty jump. Instead, he banged into the painted background above the wall. Unhurt, he scrambled to his feet, gave one belligerent “meow,” and took off in another direction.

More on WWI camoufleur Frederick Alexander Pawla

At the end of May 2019, we posted a lengthy article on British-born artist Frederick Alexander Pawla (1876-1964), who was in charge of the US Army’s Embarkation Service during World War I. In that capacity, he oversaw the camouflage of “many of the army transports, particularly cargo carriers.”

More recently, we have found out more about Pawla. Specifically, we have located a series of photographs that document the process of applying a dazzle camouflage pattern that (most likely) Pawla was the designer of. The name of the ship was the USS City of Atlanta. It is shown above, with its camouflage in process of being applied.

As is evident in the photograph, the design makes use of a traditional artist’s illusion. The camoufleur has inserted a sharp white upright line on the starboard side of the bow, which will make it appear from a distance that the ship is headed at an angle to the right. He has strengthened that illusion by painting a trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) anchor to the left of that white line, then aligning it with an actual anchor on the right. A second actual anchor, which can be seen faintly from an angle on the port side of the bow, was probably painted to disappear, to blend in with that side of the ship.

The process of painting the ship is documented by a series of three photographs, two of which show the camouflage artists in the process of applying the dazzle designs on an upper section of the ship (identified in government records as the City of Atlanta). Earlier in the process, a camouflage artist had used chalk to mark out the color boundaries, while also using symbols to indicate which paint colors to apply (K designates Black, W indicates White) in which areas.

In the first photograph in this series, two men are strengthening those chalk boundaries, using white paint. In the second photograph, white paint is in process of being applied to an area that was labeled W. In the third photograph, one can see the finished result, with the black (K) and white (W) areas having been filled in, as has another color area (designated as 11) that cuts across the window, which is painted black.

Two clarifications should be noted: (1) We can see the light/dark value of color that cuts across the window, but the color itself is not identifiable. This is because this is an AI digitally-colorized version of a grayscale photograph (there are no color photographs of WWI ship camouflage), and current AI colorization cannot yet determine the hue that was actually used on the ship.

(2) Notice also that the camouflage pattern does not extend onto the floor of the deck. In WWI ship camouflage, it was considered unnecessary to apply the pattern to the deck because the design was addressed to the low-level viewing angle of a U-boat periscope. From that position, the deck surface was not visible. In contrast, during World War II, disruptive camouflage patterns were applied to the deck surfaces of ships, because other viewing angles (such as aerial views) had to be addressed as well. For more on this, see Disruption Versus Dazzle (online access).

The last of the five US government photographs included on this blogpost shows two American camoufleurs (the Army officer on the left may be Frederick Pawla), standing beside a dazzle-camouflaged ship (identified in the caption as the City of Atlanta), looking at a diagram for a ship camouflage plan, and most likely discussing the progress.

Women's Rights and Wedlocked Camouflage

The years prior to World War I, the war itself, and afterwards, were volatile to say the least. The Armory Show. Women's Suffrage. The most disgusting level of racism. Prohibition, and so on. What do any of these have to do with camouflage? Everything, as all these issues were entwined. Above, for example, is a newspaper cartoon (haven't located the artist's name) that was published in the Boston Globe on May 11, 1918. It's a rare, insightful comment about a certain camouflage technique. At the same time, it is also offensive to women, and plays up the pervasive subject of strife within marriage ("wedlock"). In August of the year before, an equally clever but even more virulent column appeared (as reprinted below) about the meaning of "camouflage" in relation to women's behavior toward men. Who wrote the column? In this case, we know the author's name. It was Arthur (Bugs) Baer, a prominent American humorist (it was he who referred to Babe Ruth as the "Sultan of Swat") who wrote in a style that reminds us of free association, automatic writing, with even a hint of connection to the experimental writings of Gertrude Stein.

•••

 Arthur (“Bugs”) Baer, CAMOUFLAGE. Evening World (New York). August 18, 1917, p. 3—

THIS WAR is being fought on words that ain’t in the dictionary. Old man Noah Webster knew a few spoonfuls, but he didn’t know anymore about camouflage than a hog does about Sunday. You can lamp his dictionary until you sprain an eye, but you won’t apprehend anything about camouflage in his unabridged word garage. Camouflage is a bilking industry with the libretto and music written by the French. The theory is to swindle the German’s eyes. The Frenchmen cover ‘emselves with a lot of leaves. They got the theory from Adam and Eve, but ain’t paying royalities.

After he is camouflaged up in a set of form fitting leaves, the Frenchman ankles off for a short vegetarian stroll toward the Kasier’s trenches. Some husky Boche tosses his optic toward him, but figures him out for a rhododendren bush rehearsing for a tableau vivant. First thing he knows, the rhododendron bush goes Democratic and poor old Hans is listed among the slightly killed, totally wounded or partially missing.

THE IDEA of camouflage is to gyp the enemy. Give him one five for two tens. You heard about the cowboy who called on his best girl and found her bivouacking in another cowboy’s lap. He pulled out his .45 calibre revolver to shoot the beauty spot off her false, deceiving chin, when she looks at him like page 254 of Ouida’s novels.
  
“Do you believe your dearie, or do you believe your eyes?” she piped.
 
The poor fish believed his dearie, and they got married and lived snappily ever after. She had that fool cowboy all camouflaged up with her metropolitan tongue and city ways.
 
Still, camouflage is no novelty among the unfair sex. A flapper will high heel along the macadamized turf, all ambushed up in a swarm of Djer Kiss [the flying kisses of fairies]. She will have a gang of summer furs lurking on her shoulders and a mob of paint, powder and other beauty utensils loitering on her face. She will have a complexion fairer than a Supreme Court decision. But when she gets home and starts to uncamouflage, she puts on ten years for everything she takes off. She has one of those removable complexions. By the time that she has moulted her blonde hair, shed her automatic teeth and discarded her mechanical eye, she is older than hieroglyphics, and gains every lap.
 
She has one of those folding complexions that you can carry in your handbag. The French have no monopoly on that camouflage institution. Yea bo.

UNDER THE modern regime of beauty camouflage, everything about a woman complexion is detachable except her ears.
  
There are different branches of study in the camouflage curriculum. In Washington, the Senators have oratorical camouflage down to a science. Their speciality is painting word pictures, using their chin as a brush. There isn’t a battle that the Senate can’t win with a few maxillary calisthenics. Rhetorical camouflage is great stuff, but you can’t bridge the ocean with a pontoon of words. Any union Senator with his vocal camouflagers on can build a fleet in three paragraphs or raise an army with a few chin excursions. Aesop’s jackass had the camouflage idea when he attended the zoo bal masque wearing the lion’s coat and vest, but a few chirps of his fool mule tongue gummed his camouflage.
  
The gent who disguises himself behind a camouflage of women’s skirts in order to escape military service is smaller than the Republican vote in Alabama. A guy that little can ambush himself behind a cancelled postage stamp. The slackers are utilizing a camouflage of women’s skirts, dependent relatives, conscientious objections, flat feet, weak heart and weaker knees. Which is a camouflage that fails to camouflage by quite a few flages. And a culprit who tries to hide behind a woman’s petticoats would have to pass his career in a bureau drawer. That’s where the ladies are wearing their pettiskirts. Nope, we ain’t married, but we read The Delineator [a women’s magazine at the time].

THE PARAMOUNT idea of camouflage is to create an aura of low visibility which will enable you to ramble around in safety. The chameleon has the right idea, and one that might be elaborated. For instance, a bill collector would never find you if you were camouflaged as a waste basket. All the props you need for this ambush is a loose wicker basket and a hat made of old newspapers, vacant letters and unraveled souvenir postcards. You can circumvent the heat by camouflaging yourself as a mint julep. With enough practice you can become a perfect julep. Even your wife will be unable to detect the difference on your breath.
  
By camouflaging yourself as a porcupine with a flat wheel, you can secure enough elbow space in the subway to draw in a breath edgeways once in a while. Bat as drawing in a subway breath is suicide at a nickel a ticket, this camouflage is rather intricate.
  
Peace hath her camouflages as well as war. With a lttle cranial dexterity and a few cerebral gymnastics, camouflaging can be utilized to alleviate the inconvenience of civilization.
  
There will be a camouflage for every ill.
  
Of course, in the case of the poor henpecked husband, we can paint no disguise with a brush.
  
The only camouflage will be distance. And you will have to paint that with your heels.

Below (updated 24Mar2019): Moments ago while browsing the "free photo website" of Gratisography, we ran across this photograph by Ryan McGuire which, by fortunate coincidence, uses much the same trickery as the "wedlocked" cartoon from 1918.

Photo by Ryan McGuire

Mirrored Camouflage Listening Posts in WWI

An apparent problem during World War I was that of trying to conceal an eavesdropper within listening distance of the enemy's position. As we've shown in earlier posts, this was sometimes accomplished by constructing (probably using papier mâché) the convincing likeness of a rotting horse carcass. Hollowed out and equipped with peepholes, it was of sufficient size that a soldier could secretly listen during the day, then return to his unit in darkness.

It is impossible to know how often (if at all) "ye olde dead horse deception" was actually used on the battlefield. The only photographs we've seen were made as demonstrations at camouflage training camps, and distributed to various American news services, for amusing wartime anecdotes. If the method were actually used on the battlefield, it would not be wise to reveal it to the public.

Other devices were also employed, or at least they were tested at camouflage training camps. Reproduced above, for example, is a US Army photograph of three soldiers who were testing a curious listening device that consists of a mirrored sheet mounted on a wooden frame (tilted forward slightly). The irregularly-shaped leafy edge is an attempt to make it fit in better within a natural setting. Because the panel front is mirrored, a distant observer would see a reflected image of the terrain, but not the soldier behind it. It may seem like a brilliant idea, but it can't have been very effective. In this photograph, the three soldiers are positioned so closely together that their own bodies would be partly visible in the mirror of the person behind them.

The National Archives and Records Administration online documentation of this (NARA 55162019 and 55162023) includes an additional photograph (as in before-and-after views). In that image (shown below), we see the enemy's point of view (more or less) and—voila!—there is not a trace of the hidden listeners (well, almost).

This idea was not unprecedented at the time of WWI, and it has since resurfaced frequently, probably independently of its older wartime function. As one of many examples, reproduced below is a patent drawing for a "Reflective Hunting Blind," invented c2008 by Kevin Pottmeyer and Chester Burdette and registered as US Patent 8579007 B2. It is currently available as the GhostBlind Waterfowl Blind.

It consists of four hinged panels, irregularly shaped along the top edge, with peepholes through which a hunter can look. The inner surface is covered with a disruptive camouflage pattern, while the side that faces out (as shown here) is a reflective mirror surface (tilted forward slightly). As a result, the inventors explain—

A game animal looking into the front of the blind from a distance therefore sees only a reflection of the terrain surrounding the blind, thereby making the blind substantially indiscernible from the surrounding terrain and effectively obscuring a hunter…

Inept Trompe l'Oeil Camouflage in WWI

Camp Sherman, Chillicothe OH, building camouflage (1919)

Distant view of same building (1919)

Surely, some of the least persuasive camouflage of World War I was illusionistic building camouflage, devised by Allied infantry camoufleurs. Sometimes it was designed by artists who were assumed to be experts because, as civilians, they had worked or studied as artists. Too often, apparently, they may not have been sufficiently skilled as painters, nor did they genuinely understand the conditions that contribute to effective camouflage. There is ample indication of that in wartime vintage photographs of the use of quaint pictorial scenes (inept trompe l'oeil realism) on the sides of buildings, which can't have fooled anyone. Show here (above and below) are various examples of that from government photographs from WWI.

As was featured in an earlier post, it was common to use perspective illusions in setting up phony pictorial scenes.

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Henry Berry [American artist, writer and WWI camoufleur], Make the Kaiser Dance. NY: Doubleday, 1978, p. 206—

None of us, including the captain, knew a goddamn thing about camouflage, but it got us out of all the drilling and what have you.

309th Engineers, Camp Taylor KY (1918)

European building camouflage (c1918)

Ambulances painted on building, Camp Taylor KY (1918)

Camouflaged Naval Air Station in FL (c1919)