Obituary for
Eric Monk F.S.A.I.

Eric Monk, Fellow and founder of the internationally recognised Society of Architectural Illustration, died peacefully on Saturday 17th August 2013. He was 91.
Eric’s ambitions seemed less for himself than his profession and its practitioners and so, in 1975 from his provincial studio, he started the Society of Architectural and Industrial Illustrators.
Such was his enthusiasm that he soon had a hundred or more of the country’s top illustrators as members - and patrons as notable as Gordon Cullen, Edward Mills, Sir Hugh Casson, Past President of the RIBA, and Sir John Betjeman.
The present Patron of the SAI, Ben Johnson, artist, said, “He is a person so many people owe a great deal to, not just the forming of The Society but everything that was connected with its formation, the greater respect for Architectural Illustration ,its role in promoting contemporary architecture, the position of the illustrator as a communicator to a broad audience and the encouragement of specialized education.
We should all raise a glass to a modest, talented and great man”.

The format of the Society was so successful that it was copied in many countries throughout the World including the USA, Australia and Japan. The Society remains the only one which is recognised for awarding professional qualifications by the conferring the suffix MSAI by election. ______________________________________________________________________________
Eric Monk was born on the 26th September 1922 and spent much of his youth cycling around the country with a sketchbook recording his trips and the buildings which attracted his attention.
He joined the RAF prior to WW2 and was stationed in South Wales, Rhodesia and, as a wireless operator, Iraq. He met and married Doris in 1947.
On leaving the RAF his jobs included map making with the Ordnance Survey, as a New Town Planning draughtsman with the Crawley Development Corporation and as an Architectural Design Equipment salesman. He then became self-employed earning a living with his exquisite line drawings of important local buildings including most of the Pubs, of course.
As a man intensely devoted to all things mechanical he wrote a definitive treatise on the arcane subject ‘Locks & Keys’, which is still in print to this day.
In 1975 he founded The Society of Architectural and Industrial Illustrators and later with the encouragement of his fellow members, campaigned for the Society to be accepted as a Charity.
The application was accepted on condition that the title was modified to express the aims of the Society and not of the individual member. So it was that the word Industrial was dropped and Illustrators became Illustration.
Thanks to Eric Monk the Society continues its charitable work by presenting the Art of the Illustration, in all its’ forms to universities, schools and public events such as the Big Draw.
Eric leaves his son Tim and his family