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.

Camouflage Exhibition

I have stumbled across a major exhibition during my research called Camouflage. The exhibition explores the impact of camouflage on modern warfare and popular culture.

Artists and designers were employed to conceal and distort everything from soldiers to battleships and the concept behind this exhibition is to explore camouflage and to see how artists and designers can be influenced to use contemporary art and fashion from a street-style point of view to couture.  

These artists and designers have had a key role in this new development of camouflage by concealing soldiers, aircraft, tanks, ships and buildings but also creating visual deceptions.

Camouflage has always been adopted by anti-war protesters and even by famous musicians such as The Clash and Public Enemy. 

The Clash

The patterns that are being used for camouflage have also inspired artists from Andy Warhol, Alain Jacquet and Alighiero Boetti. It has also conquered the fashion world by inspiring couture designers like Jean Paul Gautier and even street style, which was created by Maharish.

Andy Warhol

Alain Jacquet

Alighiero Boetti

Lee Mills Visit 3

During my visit to Lee Mills I spent most of the day archiving pattern booklets from different time periods. I really enjoyed archiving again as I found it very clam and relaxing but i was again amazed to see what these pattern booklets looked like and how fashion kept growing and updating itself in these time periods.

Lee Mill's Visit 2

During my visit to Lee Mills, I have been very interested in looking at some examples of knitting objects from the World War and even looking through some of the pattern booklets they had back then. During my visit they managed to show me a crocheted tablecloth, a knitted bandage and some pattern booklets from the war. I was really amazed by how these have survived for so long and it was great to see a part of history right there.

Knitted Bandage

A ‘Welcome Home’ Tablecloth, statement written by Barbara and Angharad

In the early 20^th century, “fancy work” magazines would be often published with patterns for pictorial designs in crochet. This continued throughout WWI and even some designs during the war would have patriotic themes alongside them.

In the Lee Mills Archive they have a small collection of a few surviving examples of patriotic fancy work, including two identical tablecloths with borders in filet crochet. The design has been crossed between the French and British flags, anchors, battleships and the slogan “Welcome Home.”

The design was published in Fancy Needlework Illustrated at around 1915, but note that some of the issues are not dated. This design is called L’Entente, which suggests that it was intended to celebrate the alliance with France. The complete design has a triangle in each corner of the tablecloth with United worked into it but none of the other examples in this collection has this and they imagine tat the “Welcome Home” message was more appealing, especially to family’s who had members of their loved ones in the force. There is also a matching tea-cosy design in the magazine and there surviving examples of this, but they are not currently in the Guild collection.

One of the tablecloths has an accompanying note from the donor. The girl had a father who was in the Grenadier Guards in the Boer War, and who later went on to fight in the Great War created a crocheted the cloth. She was born in 1897 and the cloth was used for her 90^th birthday party. She died in 1992, aged 95, and the cloth was given by her daughter.

Lee Mill's Visit 1

During my visit to Lee Mills, we started having a brief introduction and discussion about what each of us wanted to look into at the archive; we talked about taking part in writing an article to either Selvedge or Slipknot and we also had a tour of the actual archive. It was very exciting to see how much archival material they had collected over the years. The vast amount of material here is astonishing by how some of it dates back to the First World War right up to the present day. You can actual see the timeline throughout this archive. We then learnt how to archive booklets/leaflets form different time periods. I really enjoyed archiving as I found it very clam and relaxing but it was amazing to see what these pattern booklets looked like and how fashion kept growing and updating itself in these time periods.