Edward Bainbridge Copnall

This bricklayer-turned-sculptor carved his name into London’s postwar skyline without ever calling himself an artist. Copnall kept a chisel in his coat pocket and trimmed doorways down the street just to feel the weight in his hands. One afternoon he turned a builder’s yard into a gallery overnight by welding scrap metal into looming towers that leaned like drunk giants. Hunt down his 1951 steel maquette outside the Royal Festival Hall; it’s the size of a broom closet but holds half the river’s breeze in its curves.