Rhode Island School of Design Librarian Claudia Covert displays a folder containing World War I era drawings that were plans for the camouflage of ships, at RISD’s Fleet Library.

AP / Steven Senne

PROVIDENCE Forget battleship gray.

When it came time to paint the S.S. Massachusetts, an 8,000-ton freighter that was one of thousands of privately owned ships pressed into service during World War I, shipyard crews had a wide array of patterns and colors to choose from. On the bridge, they applied a combination of black, blue, white and gray-green in a way that suggested a giant cubist painting. A similar color scheme was used on the hull, where the patterns ranged from graceful curves to jagged zigzags.

When they were done, the ship looked like — well, it was hard to tell what it looked like. Then again, that was the point: To help it elude German U-boats, the S.S. Massachusetts had been covered with an unusual form of marine camouflage known as “dazzle” or “razzle-dazzle.”

Tomorrow, the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design will open what may be the first-ever exhibition devoted to dazzle-style camouflage. Dubbed “Bedazzled,” the show will feature about a dozen government-issued blueprints that showed workers how to apply dazzle patterns to everything from passenger ships to Navy gunboats. A related symposium will be held Feb. 14.

The blueprints, most of which have never been exhibited before, are part of a collection of more than 400 dazzle patterns and related materials donated to RISD in 1919. The only comparable collection is owned by the National Archives in College Park, Md.

“Bedazzled” curator Claudia Covert says the plans were donated by Maurice Freedman, a former RISD student who served as the chief camouflage officer, or “camoufleur,” at a naval shipyard in Jacksonville, Fla. Covert says Freedman brought the plans with him when he enrolled at RISD.

“Obviously, he must have packed them up and brought them with him, which is a little strange since many of them are marked ‘confidential,’ ” says Covert. “Then again, maybe he was saving them for posterity. Certainly, a lot of dazzle-related material has disappeared over the years.”

Regardless of Freedman’s motives, the collection sheds light on a largely forgotten corner of military history. While combatants have used disguise and concealment for thousands of years, the systematic study and use of camouflage patterns is a relatively recent phenomenon.

By most accounts, the history of modern camouflage begins with Alfred Thayer, a prominent Boston artist who spent his spare time studying what he called “protective coloration” in nature.

It was Thayer’s belief that animal markings like zebra stripes and leopard spots are more than just decorative flourishes cooked up Mother Nature. Instead, by making the animals harder to see (or at least harder to see clearly), they actively helped them evade predators or stalk their prey.

In 1898, Thayer and another artist, George de Forest Brush, proposed using camouflage patterns (they called it “counter-shading”) to protect ships during the Spanish-American War. The war ended before the proposal could be acted on. But by the outbreak of World War I in 1914, many countries were experimenting with camouflage for use on land, sea and air.

The French were the first to establish an official camouflage unit, the Service de Camouflage, in 1915. They were followed by the British, Italians, Germans and Americans.

Since then, of course, camouflage has moved off the battlefield and into mainstream culture. Popular designs like the U.S. Army’s “woodland leaf pattern” and the more recent “pixel patterns” (think camouflage meets The Matrix) are staples of contemporary street fashion.

By contrast, marine dazzle patterns like the ones in the RISD exhibit are relatively little known.

“It’s really uncharted territory,” says Covert, who began researching RISD’s dazzle collection after arriving at the school four years ago. “As far as we can tell, this was a very coordinated process. The patterns were developed by military camofleurs. Once approved, the patterns were printed, bound and distributed to regional shipyards, where they were used to paint actual ships.”

Yet eventually much of this material was either tossed out or filed away and forgotten. “Our collection and the one at the National Archives — that’s pretty much it,” Covert says.

Another mystery is whether the dazzle patterns actually worked. According to Covert, the widespread use of “dazzled” ships coincided with the adoption of another military tactic: the use of multi-ship convoys to protect American and allied merchant ships from attacks by German U-boats. As a result, the effectiveness of dazzle patterns by themselves was never fully tested.

“Basically, dazzle never had a chance to prove its worth,” Covert says.

Still, Covert thinks that dazzle proponents were on to something. She notes, for example, that dazzle patterns were never intended to hide something as big as a Navy frigate or an ocean-going tanker. Instead, the seemingly random stripes, swirls and zigzags were intended to confuse an enemy, making it harder for gunners to judge things like speed, direction and distance.

Applying different patterns to different parts of a ship also made it harder to identify vulnerable areas like the stern or the bridge — places where a bomb or a torpedo might do extra damage.

“From what I can tell, there is at least some anecdotal evidence that the dazzle patterns did help,” Covert says. “At the very least, they made the people on the ships feel safer.”

Another question is what role artists have played in creating camouflage patterns.

By most accounts, artists have been intimately involved in the development of camouflage, beginning with Thayer and Brush in the 19th century. A French artist, Louis Guingot, is credited with creating the first camouflage infantry uniforms, while British “camoufleurs” may have been inspired by Vorticism — a homegrown version of Cubism. In the United States, artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield and Grant Wood also worked as military “camoufleurs.”

A famous story about Picasso also supports the art-camouflage connection.

According to the (possibly apocryphal) story, Picasso and a friend were walking along a street in Paris when a convoy of French tanks passed them buy. Seeing the abstract camouflage patterns on the tanks, Picasso is said to have remarked: “It is we that have created that.”

Still, Covert says, the extent to which art movements like Cubism and Vorticism actually influenced camouflage remains a matter of debate.

“Unfortunately, we don’t really know much about the relationship between art and camouflage,” she says. “Obviously, there’s a lot of similarity between some of the dazzle patterns and a movement like Cubism. But did one influence the other? The truth is we don’t really know.”

Covert hopes that the RISD exhibit and its accompanying symposium will help shed light on some of these questions. The symposium, for example, will feature a number of experts, including Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University, and Ray Behrens, a RISD alumnus who has done extensive research on the history of camouflage.

Covert also hopes to learn more about RISD’s own “camoufleur” — Maurice Freedman.

“So far, we’ve been able to find out a few things about him,” she says. “For example, we know that after graduating from RISD he worked as a commercial artist in the Providence area. We also have a copy of a game that he developed that’s similar to Battleship. But that’s about it.

“Hopefully, somebody will hear about the exhibit and contact us.”

“Bedazzled” opens tomorrow and runs through March 29 at the Fleet Library at RISD, 15 Westminster St. in Providence. Hours: Mon.-Fri. 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Sat. 10-6 and Sun. noon-7. For more information, call (401) 790-5900 or visit www.risd.edu/dazzle/. The symposium, “Artists at War: Exploring the Connections between Art and Camouflage” will take place from 2-4 p.m. on Feb. 14 in RISD’s Chace Center auditorium. The symposium and the exhibition are free and open to the public.

bvansicl@projo.com