Trade Names: Although the Celtic Tiger passed it by, James Healy Ltd has decided to stay small, compact and away from the mass production end of the metal business. Rose Doyle reports

Brass and bronze are on a downturn, their decorative place in our lives taken by other metals, by plastics, by the disposable.

Down but not out, not by a long way. James Healy (Brass Founders Engineers) Ltd, located at 51-54 Pearse Street, know a thing or two about brass and bronze, and other metals. The company is where those seeking the best have been going since the middle of the last century for handcrafted stair rods, mat frames, hand rails, candlesticks, church, hotel, airport and office fittings. James Healy Ltd is the firm which made the cross for the top of Knock Cathedral (it has a steel core), racing's Power's Gold Cup (brass-plated in gold), and the Abbey Theatre's aluminium canopy. More recently, it was responsible for the much admired ornamental lights in Cork's Aula Max and the just completed reredos in Armagh Cathedral.

Though the path to their door is well-known, the numbers travelling it are less than they used to be. Things have changed, though this is more a question of emphasis than utterly. James Healy Ltd is still actively involved in general metal fabrication and restoration, the old part of the business. But they are increasingly concentrated on their role as non-ferris metal distributors and stockists of engineering materials.

The company is also on the move, consolidating and heading for the JFK Industrial Estate off the Naas Road.

Traffic's at the root of it, as it is for so many fleeing the city centre; traffic, parking and the difficulties people have getting to Pearse Street. James Healy Ltd will "keep a presence" in their time-worn location, probably in the form of a showroom. "We'll feel the loss," Tony Healy, doyen of the eight family members in the business and company secretary, admits. "We'll feel the loss . . . but it's not practical any more."

Time was when there was another, more intimately vibrant, life in the company's part of Pearse Street. It had its hey-day in the 1850s, when the area's great, Georgian townhouses were built and when, according to Tony Healy, "there was a hive of industry in the area generally - small shops and businesses and craftmakers".

By the 1870s McLoughlins, an older and equally renowned brass and bronze casting and crafting company, had amalgamated and adapted 51-54 Pearse Street for their own needs. Behind today's Georgian facade there's a vast and cavernous workshop and storage, atmospheric and cluttered and with more than a hint of times past about it.

James Healy Ltd, by a circuitous route, arrived in the Pearse Street buildings in 1969. Tony Healy, wryly humorous and with some help from his brother, Dermot, tells the story of the family business like it was.

"My father, James, started the business in Cumberland Street in 1948," he says. "He lived off Meath Street and had served his time in Dockrells in Ship Street. In the early days he did a lot in the ironmongery trade. Gradually he made a way into the building trade, into a broad cross section of work involving brass, steel, aluminium and such. The 1950s and 1960s were good for us because the building trade was expanding. I came into the business in 1964 after doing accountancy."

But change was on the way, even then. McLoughlins moved from Pearse Street to Jamestown Road - then fell victim of Vatican II and the subsequent decline in church demand for elaborate casting in bronze and brass. The place had been empty for a while when James Healy, according to his son, "took a gamble which proved good and bought it. We moved in 1969. My father died the same year."

Tony Healy, for a while, was on his own with about 20 employees. He's been joined, over the years, by his siblings: Dermot, who has an engineering background; Brian who manages the warehouse on the Naas Road; Barry who looks after the work shop and liaises with architects and foremen on site; Rita who does the accounts; Jim in sales; and Cormac, also involved in the Naas Road depot. A third generation of Healys is represented by Dermot's son, John, who has come board to look after the IT and computer end of things.

James Healy Ltd, also over the years, was responsible for landmark brass and bronze works; the ambo in Galway Cathedral, the brass-clad pillars at the entrance to the IFSC, the AIB eagle, the bronze lights, stairs and brass panellings in the Treasury Building.

Along the line there was diversification. "The jobbing end of things became too labour-intensive and competitive. There are smaller, specialised firms who can do it cheaper so we diversified from fabricating to the metal supply end. We had been making everything - even manhole covers for sewers in brass and bronze because steel would have rusted. It all changed in a short space of time, galvanised steel and such taking over. The future lies with small, specialised business - some of the bigger names in the building trade are setting up their own fabrication plants."

A man who calls a spade a spade, Tony Healy says that, though the company was "reasonably buoyant" in the early 1970s, they didn't want it to become too big, so "began cutting back on the employment level".

Today's company has a workforce of 20 people, including family members. "We've been cutting back on the fabrication end of things since the 1980s and expanding the supply end," Tony explains, "the likes of brass tubes, axles, flats, sheets sections and so on. We didn't want to get too big, wanted to keep the firm small, compact and specialised. We're more interested in doing the job well than going into the mass production end."

James Healy Ltd opened a Cork depot in the 1980s and one in Limerick in the 1990s. In the mid-1990s they set up the depot into which they are consolidating off the Naas Road.

For all this, Tony Healy insists, wryly humorous, that "we didn't see the Tiger. He didn't even pass up the road. We were doing better in the 1960s and 1950s than in Celtic Tiger Ireland. Even though we're smaller than we should be, comparatively speaking, I see great hope for the future."

As a family, and as workers together, the Healys get on. "We have frictions and disagreements," Tony says. "We're all directors and, when Dermot and I leave, our younger siblings will take responsibility. I can't see either of us retiring, however."

Barry Healy is the company's craftsman and has three craftsmen working with him as well as a craftsman/polisher and driver/helper. Private individuals still come looking for stair rods (out of fashion since the 1970s but making a comeback) as well as for mat frames. Tony Healy says he's got "very little" brass in his own home, says he sees enough of it every day.

James Healy Ltd, he says, "will always cater to restoration and preservation projects, always be interested in quality craftwork in specialised areas."

He also says of the eight family members involved, that "we're Jacks (and a Jill) of all trades and masters of none. We're all willing and able and don't strictly segregate responsibility."