C A M O U P E D I A

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Tuesday, August 11, 2026

that artists should be placed in charge of camouflage

False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage
Captain Aymar Embury II, US Reserve, "Nature's Camouflage and Man's" in The New Country Life. Vol 34 No 2, June 1919, pp. 27-40—

It is fitting that military men should have turned to the artist-naturalists for information on camouflage, and should have placed artists in charge of military camouflage, not the United States alone, but in England and France as well, and I believe also in Germany. In this country the camouflage, both naval and land, is being done largely by artists with the assistance of men of kindred professions, such as the stage and architecture…

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FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research in Art, Architecture and Camouflage

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Below Drawing by Charles Livington Bull with the following caption: Perhaps the best known of all the camouflage tricks is the dead horse made of papier maché, or even of steel, so arranged that the sniper or lookout can hide in it and keep watch of the enemy.

Monday, August 3, 2026

the unknown role of Iowa artists in modern camouflage

Coming soon: At 2:00 pm on Sunday, August 9, I will be giving a one-hour illustrated talk on camouflage in connection with art, nature, and its military uses in World War I. The talk will take place at the German American Heritage Center & Museum at 712 West 2nd Street in Davenport, Iowa. Insights and surprises abound. Looking forward to it! For more information, see gahc.org.

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

Saturday, August 1, 2026

ship camoufleurs George Musaphia / B.R. Campbell

George Musaphia illustrations

I know almost nothing about an American illustrator named George Musaphia. The little that I do know I found in a brief news article in the Spokane Chronicle (October 7, 1918), which reads as follows—

RECORD CLAIMED BY CAMOFLEURS Two Seattle "camofleurs"—the men who paint the zig-zag stripes on ships returned recently from Portland OR, where they spent six days supervising the camouflaging of six vessels being built for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The total of six ships in six days is believed a camouflaging record.

The two are George Misaphia [sic], formerly a New York portrait painter, and B.R. Campbell, who, in peace times, is a Boston theatrical scenery decorator.

That's it. I've searched for both artists, Musaphia (not Misaphia, unless I'm mistaken) and Campbell, the latter of whom is possibly a New England artist named Brooks R. Campbell (1898-1977), who worked as a sign painter in Manhattan. It seems likely that the other man was George (or Georges) Musaphia (1894-1979), but I could be wrong.

One thing about Musaphia that seems certain is that he was affiliated with the theatre, and that he worked in Boston (in advance of World War I) as an illustrator for theatre reviews. Maybe that's how he met Campbell, who is described as a "Boston theatrical scenery decorator."

The six Musaphia illustrations that I have found so far were all published in 1913. I've scanned and reproduced them here. They are stylistically consistent, but the attribution is also clear because he signed his name in an unusual way, part symbol and part letters. They were published in the Boston American on the following dates (from top to bottom) September 7, October 12 and 19, and November 2, 9 and 30. He probably was a portrait painter because his theatre illustrations are, without fail, essentially portraits of the actors as they appear in costume.

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Seymour Reit / cartoonist, animator, writer, camoufleur

Since early childhood, I have known about Casper the Friendly Ghost, a cartoon character who first appeared in comic books in the late 1940s. But it may have been forty years later that I learned about Seymour Reit (1918-2001), the American animator and children's book author who may (or may not, since there has long been some dispute) have been the person who came up with Casper's character.

As an adult, although Reit was short (he was five foot four), he was larger than life in terms of all his accomplishments. He began his career as an animator for the famous Fleischer Brothers, and in his final decades he was a prolific contributor to MAD Magazine. But that is the tip of the iceberg: as a writer or cartoonist, he was also affiliated with Will Eisner, Archie, Little Lulu, Gulliver's Travels, Popeye, Betty Boop, and Captain Kangaroo.

But he also had two wartime links: First, he was born in New York on Armistice Day on November 11, 1918, the day that marked the ending of World War One, with the result that his parents named him Seymour Victory Reit. And then, when the US entered World War Two, he enlisted in the Army Air Force as a lieutenant, and served as a camoufleur.

I suspect that I first heard about Reit in 1978, when I ran across a copy of a book that he had written, titled Masquerade: the amazing camouflage deceptions of World War II (New York: Hawthorn Books). At the time, I had been researching and writing about art and camouflage for about a decade, and his book was enormously helpful in learning about the varieties of deception in World War Two. It is still of considerable value, even though quite a few other volumes on the same subject have more recently been produced.

Seymour Reit

NOTE: For more on cartooning, animation, shapeshifting, metamorphosis and camouflage, see this online video talk.

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

was utter nonsense / camouflage as painting things up

Bus for wounded soldiers at WWI fundraising rally [colorized]
Peter Rodyenko, “Camouflage: Modern aerial photography outmodes paint, results in introduction of new techniques” in Life magazine (January 13, 1941), p. 39—

To most people, the art of camouflage means "painting things up." They are, of course, very wrong. In general, they get this impression from seeing pictures of guns and tanks "camouflaged" with crisscross and zigzag designs. In their newspapers they read of snipers who wear strange-colored costumes to "confuse" the enemy. They hear and believe stories about industrial buildings which have been so decorated with dazzle paint that they are invisible from the air. What they do not realize is that most of such stuff is utter nonsense.

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Monday, July 20, 2026

painting camouflage on trucks—then washing it off

WWI camouflaged ammunition truck (colorized)
Eugene Wokal, quoted in Ronald Naversen, The Scenographer as Camoufleur. Dissertation. Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University, 1989, p. 47—

I became friends with Major Peter Rodyenko [who taught camouflage at Pratt Institute]…I traveled down there [to Fort Belvoir] to look around and decided I wanted to work on camouflage. We trained by painting trucks and washed off the paint at night so we could do it again tomorrow.

See also

Rodyenko, Peter (1936) “On Camouflage Training” in The Reserve Officer Vol 13 No 9 (September), pp. 5-7.
___(1941) “Camouflage: Modern aerial photography outmodes paint, results in introduction of new techniques” in Life magazine (January 13), pp. 39-42.

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Friday, May 1, 2026

preparing models for testing WWI dazzle camouflage

This is such an interesting photograph. The caption reads "Making models for testing World War I ship camouflage." The original is dated on the back as February 10, 1919, but that's absurd. It must have been made in 1918 (or even late 1917). Nor is the location a certainty. None of these people appear in other photographs of the staff members of the US Navy's Washington DC camouflage lab, nor is this the same room as in those photographs. It's also puzzling that one of them is a woman, most likely a civilian (all three appear to be in civilian clothing).

They are making ship models out of wood, using woodworking tools, such as the jigsaw on the left. In the center in the very back is a shelving unit on which finished, painted models are stored, and on the far right there is a suspended chart that shows various ship designs. Clearly evident also are the water sprinkler system pipes, which reminds us of a newspaper item from early 1918, reporting that the ship camouflage workshop had been damaged by fire. Based on a public domain government photograph at the Naval History and Heritage Command NH 41721 / digital coloring.

A grayscale print of this photograph was featured in an exhibition at the Hearst Center for the Arts (Cedar Falls IA) in 2018, for which the caption read—

During World War I, the process of designing ship camouflage began with the construction of unpainted wooden ship models, built to scale. These were then given to artist/designers, who devised diﬀerent camouflage schemes for each of the two sides of the models, in preparation for testing them in a periscope-equipped observation theatre.

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Thursday, April 9, 2026

Shoeless Joe Jackson was a ship camouflage painter

Shoeless Joe
JACKSON DOING BIT BY PAINTING SHIPS: FORMER WHITE SOX OUTFIELDER OBTAINS POSITION IN SHIPYARD: Not Only Man in Baseball Who Discovers He Could Better Be Employed Elsewhere Than on the Firing Line in The Postville Review (Postville IA) no date, 1918—

Joe Jackson, until recently of the White Sox ball team, besides possessing extraordinary athletic talents, is a man of unusual physical development. Presumably he would make an excellent fighting man. But it appears that Mr. Jackson would prefer not to fight.

The facts seem to be that Jackson was about to be drafted into the army, whereupon be obtained a position in an eastern shipyard. He is said to be doing his part to beat the Huns by painting ships. Whether this work is camouflage—we refer to the methods of painting—has not been announced.

Jackson is not the only man in professional baseball who has discovered special gifts that apparently could be employed to special advantage elsewhere outside the firing line. It is to be hoped that the American public will keep these men in mind. We need shipbuilders to win the war, but when a man on the eve of being drafted into the army suddenly finds that he can best serve the nation by painting ships, good Americans will not be very enthusiastic over seeing him play baseball after the war is over. The special gifts that disqualify him for the army will likewise disqualify him for special popularity in the great American game.

A word of praise should be said for those ball players who have entered the military forces. They will undoubtedly make a good record, and it is these men in particular that we shall want to see back on the diamond.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2026

free and open to the public / art and camouflage talk

Coming soon. Save the date.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

in the process of applying ship camouflage during WWI

Above There are few photographs of World War I ship camouflage (maybe a dozen or fewer) in the process of being applied. This one may have been published only once, when it appeared in the Boston Sunday Post, August 18, 1918. The headline read BEHOLD THE CAMOUFLAGE, while the caption was worded as follows—

Here is a picture of our Jackies [sailors] helping to make a ship look like what it ain't. All it takes is a couple of mattresses, a few buckets of paint, and a few sweeps of the brush, and you have the perfectly camouflaged ship.

Camouflage, as you may possibly know, is the science of artistic concealment, and the patterns used are preferably cubistic or futuristic, as these are those which conceal the art most perfectly.

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Monday, March 16, 2026

marvelous designs and colors calculated to confuse

Above Just when we think we've found everything, suddenly something new appears. The images above and below were made by British artist Frank H. Mason as illustrations for Stephen King-Hall, The Diary of a U-boat Commander. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1920. I have no idea of the book's veracity; in one library record, for example, it is classified as "fiction."

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Kaleidoscope of Ships: Camouflage in Eastern Harbors Look Like Futurist Nightmare in Journal and Tribune (Knoxville TN), March 8, 1918—

If some ancient mariner were to return to one of our eastern ports these days he would think the shipping world had gone mad. The submarine has called forth the camouflage artist, and the camouflage artist has painted our trans-Atlantic vessels with bizarre designs in all colors of the rainbow.

Imaginative writers used to dwell on the kaleidoscope of shipping in great harbors like New York. The term is thoroughly applicable today, for our harbors are as colorful as operatic pageants. Half of some great ship will be painted a delicate baby blue and the other half will be an arrangement in great circles and stripes and bands in black, green, yellow and pink. Another vessel will appear dressed in a succession of waving colors ranging from pink to purple. A steamship no longer resembles a steamship. It looks like a futurist nightmare.

There are two rival schools of marine camouflage. One works on the theory of low visibility and the other one strives for what is called the dazzle effect. The low visibility camoufleurs paint the ships in waving lines with the basic light ray tones—reds and greens and violets—with the idea of having the vessels merge with the atmosphere and disappear. The dazzle school goes in for a system of marvelous designs and colors calculated to confuse the aim of enemy gunners.

Even our battle ships have succumbed to the lure of strange pigmentation. The sober "fighting gray" battle ship color is a thing of the past. Our fighting craft go to their grim business in the war zone made up like [the] Russian ballet.—Independent.

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Friday, January 16, 2026

camouflaged dummies as artists' wartime specialty

soldiers placing decoys / artist unknown
CAMOUFLAGE—THE ARTISTS' BIT IN THE WAR in Oregon Daily Journal (Portland), August 18, 1917—

One of the interesting developments of the world war is the art of "camouflage," wherein artists excel. Camouflage is accomplished in a variety of ways, the general Idea being to deceive the enemy—to make him think he sees something that he doesn't see, or to make him see something he thinks he doesn't.

It is a trick in which nature excels, the wily opossum and the chameleon and its coat of changeable hue being probably the best known examples. The marking on the wings of a butterfly, the shaping of insects like leaves, the coloring of the sage hen to blend with the sagebrush, are but a few of the natural demonstrations of the principle of camouflage.

In warfare, thrusting above a trench a helmet stuck on a bayonet to draw enemy fire is a crude example. Raiders carry a dummy smokestack to hide their identity, submarines carry fake periscopes, etc.

Getting down to the finer points of the game, and this is where the artists come in, waves and foam are painted on a warship to deceive the enemy as to the ship's waterline, and the "tank" is so painted that at a comparatively short distance it merges with the landscape and is hard to distinguish.

The French and English have even gone so far as to stretch canvas upright to a height of several feet, and to paint trees, shrubbery and landscape on it, so that to the enemy it will look like the edge of a woods. Behind this curtain, then, like stage hands passing behind the back drop on a stage, thousands of troops have marched to new positions. To fool enemy airmen, canvas stretched like a canopy over a roadway is painted to blend with the surrounding field, while soldiers march beneath It, or it ls painted to represent a road over which the enemy will keep lookout for troops while the troops march elsewhere.

And so on. Camouflage is really playing an important part in strategy of campaigning, and the United States army war department has so recognized it as to put artists at the large training camps to teach the art, and painters and decorators are enlisting in special camouflage branches of the service. The illustration above shows troops placing "dummy" soldiers in position to draw enemy fire, and [below] is a camouflaged "Yankee" [a dummy made of papier maché, before being painted]…

inspection of unpainted American decoy