Artist Information
Artist
Dr. George Owen Mackie FRSC, FRS (1929-2023)Role
CeramicistDate made
1969Time Period
20th CenturyNotes
CERAMICIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in Lincolnshire, England, Dr. George Owen Mackie was a British-Canadian zoologist, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Victoria. And with his wife Gillian, he ran a successful craft pottery studio in Sidney, B.C., where he made earthenware pottery in the English Arts and Crafts and English Slipware traditions*, and of note, developed his own glazes.
The son of a doctor in the Indian Medical Service, he and his brother lived in India and England as children and at the outset of WWII they were sent to live with relatives in Vernon, B.C. In 1944, Mackie went back to England, attending Blundell's School in Devon and did two years of national service in Gibraltar. He obtained a B.A. from the University of Oxford in 1953, and later an M.A. and D. Phil (1957). Mackie emigrated to Canada with his family, working at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, moving to Victoria in 1968, where he taught at the University of Victoria. Of note, he did most of his research at the University of Washington labs on San Juan Island. In 1982, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 1991, a fellow of the Royal Society of London. Mackie was well published over six plus decades, served on many editorial boards, and was editor of the Canadian Journal of Zoology 1981-1989. He was also a lover of music, playing in chamber music ensembles.
*The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in Great Britain and later spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America, flourishing between 1880 and 1920.
The term Slipware comes from a type of colouring used in the decoration of ceramics. It originated in Staffordshire, England during the mid-17th century.
