Frederic Severne MacKenna, M.A., M.B., B.Ch., F.S.A.Scot

Severne Mackenna was born in 1902 in Kent, of an old Galloway family, and educated at the King’s School, Chester. He matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1920 but, the only child of indulgent parents, there was no hurry to embark on a career. Ten very happy, carefree years were spent at Trinity, where he fell in with a musical set, became an accomplished pianist and a keen actor at the Abbey Theatre. When he finally graduated in medicine in 1929, he decided to specialize in rheumatology and went to a hospital in Buxton for training and research before putting up his plate as a consultant in Droitwich in 1932. He was already interested in English porcelain having inherited a valuable library of ceramic literature from the well-known collector, Frank Hurlbutt, which, together with his dedicated study of important collections, formed the basis of Mackenna’s extensive knowledge of the subject. He was thus well equipped to write the series of monographs for which he was elected to the Fellowship in 1955. The first, Cookworthy’s Plymouth and Bristol, was published in 1946, followed by Champion’s Bristol and three volumes on Chelsea and, lastly in 1950 Worcester Porcelain, all with his own hand-coloured illustrations and all except the last, still widely consulted by collectors and curators. His contribution to the serious study of English porcelain remains indisputable. Almost as though he now regarded a chapter of his life closed, Mackenna decided to retire to Scotland, where he had spent many happy holidays. He sold his ceramic collection and library and in 1957 set up house at Dun Alasdair in Tarbert, with only one of his two beloved Steinways. There he bought a yacht in which he explored the Scottish coast over the next twenty years, painting watercolours along the way. After a minor mishap off the Gantocks in fog he was rescued by the local lifeboat and from then onwards his commitment to the R.N.L.I. was total. He became a volunteer on relief passages, an active fund raiser and the recipient of its highest honour, a Life Governorship. Mackenna edited The Kist, the journal of the Natural History and Antiquarian Society of Mid Argyll for many years, from number 4 to number 41, often illustrating the papers with his watercolours. The Society also published four collections of his drawings. During the 1970s and early 1980s Mackenna paid regular visits to London to deliver lectures on porcelain at the Courtauld Institute, the British Museum and Morley College. Another absorbing interest was his five-acre garden at Tarbert, where he grew rare varieties of rhododendron and daphne much sought after by professional botanists; plants and seeds being given away freely to enthusiastic gardeners. Dilettante though MacKenna may have been, no new interest completely supplanted an earlier one and he was, essentially, a man of many parts. Still handsome and charming, despite a road accident in 1996, Mackenna died on 13 July 1997, four days after his ninety-fifth birthday.