The Thorp Archive has been successful in its bid for a £5,000 Digitisation Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
The Thorp Archive, held at Arts University Bournemouth (AUB), is the complete archive of Thorp Modelmakers, founded by John Thorp in London in 1883 and still trading today under the ownership of ATOM.
The award will enable the archive to complete the initial digitisation of 2,000 images from the collection and make them publicly available on a new online catalogue in 2026.
This will allow modelmakers, architects, historians, and the general public to search not just the catalogue entries as they can now, but actually view 2,000 photographs of the architectural models Thorp made during its long history.
It will also establish an ongoing platform for further images to be added over the forthcoming years.
Leading the preservation and cataloguing of the Thorp Archive, Dr David Lund, modelmaking historian and Senior Lecturer on BA (Hons) Modelmaking at AUB, says of the award:
“We are so pleased to have been awarded this grant by the Paul Mellon Centre as it will allow us to make the archive’s incredible photographic record of Thorp’s work accessible to the public.
“As a repository of, not just the history of modelmaking, but the history of Britain’s built environment as well, the photographs of the architectural models Thorp made during the 20th century captured, not just what was built, but what was imagined, and so we are incredibly excited to be able to complete our digitisation project and share this remarkable collection in this way.”
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art offers a variety of Grants for institutions twice a year. This extremely competitive programme supports scholarship, academic research and the dissemination of knowledge in the field of British art and architectural history from the medieval period to the present.
The news comes shortly after the archive was able to secure Thorp’s entry into this year’s edition of Guinness World Records as the oldest firm of modelmakers in the world.
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