highest-paid camouflage expert in England in WWII

Eric Sloane, factory camouflage diagram

PLENTY OF DIZZY PAINTING WHEN CAMOUFLAGERS WORK in Saskatoon Star-Phoenix (Canada), December 23, 1940—

…All through the United Kingdom factories engaged in war work are gradually disappearing from view. More and more they are being heavily camouflaged so they may not be recognized by a person standing on the ground 500 yards away. Landmarks by which they might be readily identified have been given new faces.

In some places entire false avenues have been constructed to change the contours of manufacturing centers. The big foundry, say, with its rambling workshops marking the outskirts of the town, now may be nestled amid rows of framework houses. Or its walls may be hidden from view by weird painted patterns, many of them designed by Lonsdale Hands, who has become Britain’s highest-paid camouflage expert.…

It was only after the war started that Hands became interested in camouflage work. Prior to that he had spent much of his time designing newspaper advertisements for various employers in Fleet Street. One day he got married during his lunch hour, quit his job when refused an increase in pay and suddenly found himself preparing camouflage for one of the largest munition factories in the country.

Since then, his tasks have been increasing, especially since a special committee found many factories were not properly camouflaged and that full use of camouflage was not being taken advantage of by some big plants. Hands and his “Design Unit” have been called on to provide remedies.

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Richard Lonsdale-Hands (also cited as Frederick Richard de Prilleux Lonsdale-Hands) (1913-1969) is usually described as an industrial and package designer, advertising executive, and artist. He was the founder in 1937 of Richard Lonsdale-Hands Associates, which in time became one of the largest industrial and marketing firms in Europe. In a review of his paintings in 2011 in the New York Times, he was described as “an impassioned amateur painter” whose work was dismissed as a “shoo-in” for “bad painting.” The 12-page catalog for that exhibition is The Paintings of Richard Lonsdale-Hands (NY: Hirschi and Adler, 2011). 

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 /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

dazzle-camouflaged corporate interior in West London

The headquarters of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is located in White City, West London, in a cluster of buildings commonly known as the BBC Media Village. Near the inside entrance of the Broadcast Center is an “art wall” that, in part, is a reminder of World War I-era dazzle-camouflaged ships. Designed by British artist Simon Patterson, its disruptive black and white stripes (as shown here) also includes the names of various people who have worked “behind the scenes” at that corporation.  For more information, see Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell, The spaces of organization and the organization of space. London: Bloomsbury, 2008.

magic motorways / camouflage / norman bel geddes

Christopher Innes, Designing Modern America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 147—

During [World War II] the army borrowed part of the Futurama model [designed for the 1939 New York World's Fair by Norman Bel Geddes] for a camouflage school, where it was used to demonstrate techniques of deceptive coloration and the effectiveness of visual illusion.

In addition to his Futurama landscape being used in the camouflage school, Bel Geddes himself designed camouflage patterns for military vehicles and aircraft.

lowly looking car made quite snappy by paint & brush

AUTO GOSSIP in The Times (Munster IN), February 2, 1920, p. 6—

Old Man Snodgrass, of the Auto Customs Shop, is the adeptest camouflage artist you ever saw. Not boasting at all, but says Art: “People have the doggonest time telling my work from new cars, but the difference is so little few people can tell.” What do you charge, Mr. Snodgrass, for painting a 1914 Lizzie that’s only “went” 211,999 miles? Will she look like new when you get through?

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE USED ON CAR: Lowly Looking Car Made Quite Snappy By Use of Paint and Brush: Wartime Treatment of Shipping Used to Improve Motor’s Appearance, in The Daily Colorist, June 1929—

Does your car look too fat, too tall, too short, or just generally antique?

Cheer up. Just study a few good camouflage methods and you can with paint endow it with the lines of the finest racer. The dress principle that makes stout ladies look thin through vertical-lined clothes works for cars, too.

Camouflag[ing] autos to make them look larger, lower, more luxurious is the job of Captain H. Ledyard Towle, alumnus of Adelphi Academy and Pratt Institute of Brooklyn.

Before the war nothing was known of Captain Towle’s new kind of art. Now he has applied the principles of camouflage…to the painting of automobiles.

“Tommyrot,” the auto manufacturers told him when he first submitted his ideas. “A car is a car. You can’t improve its engine or even its appearance through camouflage.”

But they gave him a chance. He went quietly to work and repainted one model. Its sales increased with astounding rapidity. Now he supervises the painting of millions of them.

He got his ideas during the war. Before that he was a portrait painter. Previous to the age of thirty he had done the portraits of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and other distinguished persons. Then during the war he acquired a more humble idea of art.

He learned that love of beauty and symmetry is not confined to the upper crust. The ordinary run of soldiers, the small farmer, the street cleaner, everyone, in fact, knows when something beautiful has been set before him.…

One of his experiments affecting the neatness of a car’s appearance consisted of taking a dark-colored car and painting a light strip along its entire length on a level with the top of the radiator.

Designer John Vassos / WWII Camouflage Consultant

John Vassos, c1932

Above Art Deco-era turnstyle, designed by John Vassos, c1932. We blogged about Greek-American designer John Vassos a few years go in reference to his service as a camouflage consultant during World War II.

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CUBISM DOMINATES NEW PARIS SALON ARTISTS, in Bluefield Daily Telegraph (Bluefield WV), September 19, 1926, Section 2, Page 4—

Paris, Sept 18—Cubism completely dominates the new Paris Salon of decorative artists. The curve must only be used in case of grave necessity. Straight lines, angles and zigzags dominate tables, chairs, lighting, jewelry, clocks, and, above all, architecture. Even carpets and curtains have to fit octogonal rooms, and are cut up themselves into tee-squares and triangles.

Chairs look as though they were cut out of solid cubes of wood and then camouflaged with a medley of colors. Curtains are often painted by hand in vivid thunder and lightning effects. The edges are made of strips of different color, each of which is a littler shorter than the last, like the ABC of a diary. Clocks are made entirely of glass, but have square faces, and are supported by glass stands cut like a Chinese puzzle. Heading lamps are equally geometrical problems. Colors are almost as angular, consisting of vivid greens, purples, magnates, raw siennas, sometimes all mixed together. The new Decorative Salon is nothing if it is not revolutionary.

When I was a boy I saw Cokes and ice cream cones

Drawings for Game Blind (US Patent 2,992,503), 1961

Byron P. Hovey, One Jump Ahead: Memories of a Yankee. New York: Exposition Press, 1982—

When four years old I moved with my parents into a large house owned by A.B. Taylor and I celebrated the change of houses and general surroundings by climbing into a two-wheeled ox cart and immediately falling from the stern to the ground, striking a stone and cutting my forehead very severely. I was said then and has been repeated by those who knew of the accident that this fall affected my brain—I yet carry a prominent scar as a result of it, but by parting my hair exactly in the middle I have managed to camouflage it.

•••

Something new is always exciting, and it is fun to look back and recall when some things started. When I was a boy I saw Cokes begin. At first, many people were opposed to Cokes, believing them to be intoxicating. But they were not. At a World’s Fair I saw ice cream cones for the first time. During the First World War, the word “camouflage” came into use. This word was a wonder to me. Radios came into use while I was young, and I recall the first time a presidential campaign was put on the air. When I was in about the fifth grade airplanes were new. In school some of us children looked at Popular Mechanics magazine one day and decided that airplanes would never be developed, as they were not practical. How wrong we were!

I recall the first time I saw a French-style telephone. I tried to use one but put the wrong end of the receiver to my ear. I can remember when electric lights replaced gaslights. I even remember the old phonographs that played cylinder records. Helicopters, modern elevators, diesel locomotives, electric doorbells—these were firsts with me also. My, how things have changed over the years—always something new and better…

•••

Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future. UK: Penguin, 1964—

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are…the reparation of the evils and damages wrought by the technology of yesterday.

Paint manufacturers, scenographers, and camoufleurs

Harrison Marine Paints Advertisement (1918)

Above There are apparently no full-color photographs of WWI-era camouflaged ships, since color photography (as we know it) had not yet been perfected. But there are thousands of black-and-white photographs, hand-painted ship models (used for testing), and artists' full-color drawings and paintings of ships, including colored diagrams that were used as reference plans as the ships were being painted. There is also this rather extraordinary magazine advertisement that appeared on the back cover of DuPont Magazine: A Review of American Industrial Progress (Wilmington DE) Vol IX No 1, July 1918. Unfortunately, the artist is not credited.

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Paint manufacturers of the United States, Paint and Varnish in the Great War. Washington DC: Institute for Industrial Research, 1919, p. 8—

Ships of war are ships of steel…[and are] serviceable only as long as [they are] protected from corrosion. Paint protection is therefore a necessity to the successful operation of a battle fleet. To the uninitiated, it might seem rather surprising to learn that the coating of one large ship may require over 100 tons of paint and that the painting is renewed practically every six months in order to maintain permanent protection and appearance.

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SHIPYARD NEWS: CAMOUFLEURS HERE THROW OUT CHESTS: Pennsylvania Shipyard Force Claims Record for Disguising War Emergency Vessels in Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia PA), December 3, 1918, p. 6—

The Pennsylvania shipyard camoufleurs are getting increased chest measurements.

They boast of the honor of having camouflaged the first and last ship built on the Delaware River for war emergency purposes.

The first ship on which the paint shop artists spilled their gaudy colors was the [USS] John M. Connelly, a 7,000-ton tanker which was launched November 10, 1917.

USS John M. Connelly in dazzle camouflage

The last vessel so decorated to deceive the eye, before the armistice was signed, was the [USS} Indianapolis, a 12,800-ton cargo carrier launched July 4 of this year.

According to the paint shop workers of the Pennsylvania yard at Gloucester, the finishing touches were put on the Indianapolis on November 11, the big day when the glorious news arrived.

USS Indianapolis in dazzle camouflage

The paint shop in the Gloucester yard is in the charge of Harry Epting, foreman.

Virtually all the deceptive lining placed on the ships was done by G.V. Ancker and the fields between colored by the brush wielders of the paint shop.

But the general supervision of the camouflage work fell on the shoulders of Paul [Bernard] King, of the camouflage department of the United States Shipping Board.

We’ve recently learned that G.V. Anker (who drew the outlines of the camouflage schemes on the ships, while less skillful painters filled them in) worked for the Nixon-Nirdlinger Theatrical Company and other major theatres in Philadelphia. In the early 1920s, he relocated to Camden NJ, and established his own firm, in which he designed and painted a wide range of components (including elaborate parade floats), as described in his advertisement below. Of particular distinction was his interior design for the New Lyric Theatre in Camden.

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 /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

G.V. Anker Company Advertisement (1924)

WWI Camouflage Artist | Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt

B.J.O Nordfeldt (c1900)

Above One of my favorite photographs is a portrait of Swedish-born American artist Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt, ca. 1900 / unidentified photographer. Bror Julius Olsson (B.J.O.) Nordfeldt papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Nordfeldt designed ship camouflage for the US Shipping Board during World War I, in San Francisco. He was a fascinating character, with an all but unbelievable range of interests and capabilities. The newspaper article below provides an account of the wartime camouflage work he did with William Penhallow Henderson, Maynard Dixon, A. Sheldon Pennoyer, Edgar Walter and others.

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SHIP CAMOUFLAGE in Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque NM). January 12, 1919—

Most delightful as well as instructive was the talk on “Ship Camouflage,” given by William Penhallow Henderson at the new museum [New Mexico Museum of Art in Albuquerque] on Tuesday evening before a really distinguished audience that included Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. [Benjamin] Pankey and other state officials, playwrights, poets, painters, scientists, educators and the social set. Col. Ralph E. Twitchell presided and cleverly introduced the speaker who illustrated his talk with the model of a camouflaged ship made by [Bror Julius Olsson] Nordfeldt, and with blackboard drawings. Mr. Henderson and Mr. Nordfeldt had been in charge of the work of camouflaging the ships on the Pacific coast at San Francisco and shipyards north and were so successful in developing the technique and devising patterns that their work became standard for the rest of the country. It was a significant statement that up to two weeks before the signing of the armistice not one ship camouflaged according to the method adopted was sunk. Mr. Henderson described how the first theory adopted, that of low visibility, proved unsatisfactory because of its limited application. It was followed by a brief period of experiments with a transition method of “impressionism,“ which was succeeded by the successful “cubist” or “distortion” patterns. Four basic patterns for that method were adopted on the Pacific coast, a combination of several of these being developed into the most successful patterns by Mr. Nordfelt and Mr. Henderson. The latter described how practical steps were taken to save the government large sums on paint and labor developing an efficiency which permitted them to accomplish with three men what it elsewhere took sixty to do. It was explained that the enemy submarine made three observations in order to get the range for the torpedo, these observations being taken at a distance of from 2,000 yards to several miles. For the last and nearest observation only eight seconds, at the most, were available to the submarine observation officer and if he was deceived by the camouflage pattern as to the location of his third sighting point, the location of the vitals of the ship and its superstructure, then the object for which the ship was camouflaged was attained for the torpedo was certain to go wild or at the most would strike only such portion of the ship as was amply protected by bulkheads. Mr. Henderson made his talk doubly interesting by the relation of incidents at the shipyards and detailed explanations of the science of camouflage which gave his listeners a far different idea than most of them had formed by casual reading.

Below William Penhallow Henderson and his wife, the writer and editor Alice Corbin. While they were living in Chicago, she was an associate editor for Poetry Magazine, while he was commissioned by Frank Lloyd Wright to design murals for Midway Gardens. He also designed the scenery for an innovative Chicago-based stage production of Alice in Wonderland.* In 1916, when it was determined that his wife Alice had tuberculosis, they moved to Santa Fe NM. After the US entered the war in 1917, Henderson began to work on ship camouflage in San Francisco.

* A dramatic screenplay script rendering of Alice in Wonderland by Alice Gerstenberg; Actress Vivian Tobin; copyright A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago 1915, Produced by The Players Producing Company of Chicago (Aline Barnsdall and Arthur Bissell), at the Fine Arts Theater, Chicago, 2/11/1915. 

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 /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Camouflage Artist | John Vassos

Cover of John Vassos biography (2016)

We are awaiting the release of the first book-length biography of the American book artist, designer, and camouflage artist John Vassos (1898-1985). Written by Danielle Shapiro, the biography is titled John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life, and is slated for release in late March 2016 (see cover above).

If people have heard of Vassos, it is usually because of his innovative Art Deco-era graphic novels, of which the best known title is Phobia, which was initially published in 1931, then reprinted by Dover Publications in 2009, the cover of which is shown below.

Cover of Dover edition of Phobia (2009)

On the other hand, they may also know about his prolific contributions to American industrial design, including TV cabinets and various other devices, while a corporate designer at the RCA Corporation. His design for a RCA Victor Special Model K, Portable Electric Phonograph (c1935) is reproduced below.

It is generally less well-known that he served with the US Army Air Corps during World War II as a camouflage consultant. He also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA in connection with efforts to support the underground resistance in Greece. In the process, he is said to have secretly parachuted into Greek territory on two occasions.

John Vassos, RCA phonograph design (c1936)