C A M O U P E D I A

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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.