Concealment

Hiding an object or changing its colour, outline, texture or pattern so that it will match the background. This is considered the most common use of a technique for camouflage.

These are a pair of Camouflaged sniper gloves from 1917. These gloves would have been part of a camouflaged suit for the snipers. But during these times it wasn’t considered to an improvement of the already existing sniper suit that was being used by the War Office. They tested the pattern for the use in disguising tanks from aerial detection as this artist had access to the models of these tanks as early as November 1916. For naval camouflage, it was suggested that they use this process but it was ruled out.

This is a US ‘Tiger Stripe’ camouflage shirt from Vietnam. This ‘Tiger Stripe’ shirt is believed to have been first worn by the Vietnamese Marine Corps from 1959. The original inspiration for the pattern comes from the French ‘Lizard Pattern’ of the early 1950’s. The US Special Forces then adopted this pattern in the earlier stage of the Vietnam conflict, as other elite sides from Australia and New Zealand would use this style. In the 1960’s South Vietnam adopted the uniform by describing it as having a very distinctive feature with the Ranger Battalions. Several uniforms of this style were being held under the contracts of Thailand, Okinawa, Taiwan and Korea.

Edward Wadsworth was serving as a naval intelligence officer in the Mediterranean when he was recruited to apply dazzle designs to ships. He oversaw the dazzle painting at Bristol and Liverpool docks and went on to produce a series of woodcuts and paintings inspired by dazzle paintings.