Edmund J Thring (1906 – 1985)

Edmund J Thring was an architectural perspectivist who produced over 2,500 perspectives in his lifetime. He spent much of the Second WorId War in the Photographic Reconnaissance Interpretation Unit at RAF Nuneham Park, interpreting aerial photographs and making models.

In ‘A History of Architectural Model Making in Britain’, David Lund notes that Thring was the chief instructor for the hundred or so recruits in the model-making department. He was described as ‘a sweetly patient man with a merciless eye and inflexible standards of quality’ who pushed his recruits hard. The team made over four hundred models for the D-Day invasion, and a thousand further models over the rest of the war. Pilots bombing German warships in Norwegian fjords found maps almost useless, so carried cardboard models of the topography in their cockpits.

Thring also served with the Observer Corps, scanning the English Channel from the Sussex coast. Following the war, he began taking commissions for architectural perspectives (there were plenty of these available on account of the extensive postwar rebuilding works).

We are grateful to the artist’s daughter for providing this information.