Arthur Norris Kennard, B.A.

Norris Kennard was born in 1911, the son of Sir Howard Kennard, G.C.M.G., C.V.O., who was British ambassador to Poland on the outbreak of war in 1939. An only child, Kennard was named after his American mother, Harriet Norris, and educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. After graduating he spent three years working voluntarily at the Wallace Collection as assistant to the late Sir James Mann, P.S.A., in the preparation of Part III of his Catalogue of European Arms and Armour, started in 1920; the entries for firearms in this were all written by Kennard. His interest in arms and armour had begun in childhood when his father's diplomatic appointments enabled him to travel throughout Europe and the Middle East and to lay the foundations of a very personal collection of armour, edged weapons and firearms. Kennard spent the war in the Welsh Guards and the Intelligence Corps and, on demobilization, was appointed by Mann, who was then Master of the Tower of London Armouries, as his assistant master. Kennard was to spend the rest of his working life at the Armouries, retiring as Deputy Master. He was responsible for the day-to-day running of the department as well as being involved in the preparation of the major loan exhibitions held there in the 1950s. In 1972 he published a useful collectors' guide to French Pistols and Sporting Guns of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, and this was followed in retirement by Gunfounding and Gunfounders: a Directory of Cannon Founders from Earliest Times to 1850 (1986), a work which had occupied him for many years. It proved of immense value to museum curators and collectors and is still a reference source for military historians. He was a liveryman of the Gunmakers' Company, a member of the Meyrick Society and a founder member of the Rowland Club. Apart from collecting arms and armour, Kennard was also a connoisseur of vintage cars and, up to his last years, drove a 1927 3-litre Bentley. Until he moved to Bath he spent many hours in the Society's library and was a regular attender at the Ordinary Meetings. Kennard's private collection, of which he had compiled his own catalogue, was sold at Christie's in March 1996 after his death on 9 July 1995.