TradeNames: A firm of stuccodores has been renewing Ireland's love affair with one of the great decorative arts. Rose Doyle reports.

Andrew Smith is a stuccodore. There aren't too many of his kind around and, even within the world of stuccodores, he's something of a rarity. He works in free-hand, a conservationist with the soul and hands of an artist. He does it, he says, "to revive the art of the craftwork involved", thinks he may be the only person who knows about free-hand work in the country, and how to apply it.

He gets his place in TradeNames because of this rarity - that and his unashamed love and passionate, crusading care about the art of restoring, reworking and giving new life to the country's old, beautiful, often nearly and sometimes completely lost decorative plasterwork. Creating new work too. Talking about it he's unselfconsciously engaged, words coming at breakneck speed.

"It all began on a summer's day in 1986," he says. "I was walking down Gardiner Place and the doors were open. I could see these wonderful ceilings and said to myself 'that would be nice to do'."

He was studying environmental management at the time, in an old building in Sackville Place, had read Kevin Kearn's book on Georgian Dublin's architecture and was spending lunchtimes wandering inner city streets. He finished his thesis - but plasterwork had claimed his heart.

So he took himself to the Architectural Archive Office in Merrion Square, found out all he could about Rococo and Classical plasterwork and "fell even more totally in love with the idea of it, worked with someone for a while, was truly hooked and then found myself living with and looking after Bobby Tyrrell, who was elderly and couldn't live alone in his 32-room home, Ballindoolin House, Co Kildare. It was a wonderful place, completely untouched since 1822 when it was built."

Ballindoolin dated from a time when simplicity was the style, elaborate wallpaper just coming into vogue. Andrew Smith, having "fed my passion in Merrion Square, visiting great houses and ruins", saw in this another view of things.

It was the 1980s, there was "no money about" and he was working on a conservation job when he met Sean Henderson, "also a stuccodore but working on different aspects to me. We decided to set up in business together in about 1991-'92, and did a few jobs designing cornices for new houses. Then Peter Pearson (the architect/historian/writer) mentioned us to an architect and we got our first real job."

This was in The United Arts Club in Upper Fitzwilliam Street, where they removed part of the plaster work and did necessary repairs." When we removed the lining paper from the ceiling we found traces of original work, interlacing tendrils coming out of the centre. I drew it in pencil and photographed it so we could work on it at a later date."

That was in 1995, the year they became an established company, and the summer was a hot one. "Very hot to be carting scaffolding around and putting it up. We did the two rooms to the front on the first floor. It took us about two months to do the first stage and a month then to complete."

The detail and care which Smith and Henderson Stuccodores Ltd would put into projects was on its way to becoming a trademark.

Andrew Smith talks about his place in the stuccodoring scheme of things. "I fit into conservation and restoration. In terms of tradition I'd be interested in free-hand work, the less damaging, creative part of it. We stuccodores have been used since Nero's Golden House in Rome and by the ancient Egyptians. I've my own recipe, a mix of lime putty and lime dust which I mix together."

As a child, he liked to draw on the flagstones of the kitchen of the farmhouse in which he was reared. His mother ("a Gunning from Hudson's Bay, Co Roscommon") is very interested in art. His great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Catherine Goldsmith, a sister of the poet, Oliver. His father came from a large farm "on the leg of Co Meath near Edenderry".

He gives a breathless potted history of stuccodoring in Ireland, how the work on Leinster house, Tyrone House (in Marlborough Street), Belvedere House and Charlemount House was all done in free-hand, how moulding came here in the late 1770s, but only for very fine, repetitive detail, how in the late 1780s, early 1790s, the Irish style of free-hand stuccodoring was "exuberant".

From the United Arts Club in 1995, Smith and Henderson went on to work on the design of a new frieze (with a golfing theme) on the part of Woodstock House (built in 1770) in the Druid's Glen destined for a golf club. "That was quite a biggish job," he admits. "We had to copy an existing cornice from 1840."

Their next important job was in 20 Dominic Street, the first house built on the street in 1758 and, as such, a showcase. The Irish Georgian Society were also involved, as was Richard Ireland, a consultant from the UK. "The original work was probably done by Robert West," Andrew Smith says. "It was very Irish in style, elaborate and over the top. I reckon there were several people working on each room. Working on Dominic Street was where we learned new methods of conservation."

He learns something new on every job, he says. He discusses plasterwork as part of a building, delves into the debate about whether it should be treated as an antique fabric, "which it is, and with same restraint". The best thing, he says, is to scrape carefully, "alkaline and such things are very destructive, they dissolve the plasterwork".

These and other details of the work he is happy to discuss at length, as well as giving his views on the need for strong guidelines as to the methodology involved in paint removal, the need to catalogue and number every tiny detail of the work in progress.

"I'd like to see the same standards as exist on the Continent, where only master craftspeople are allowed near important plasterwork. Anyone who does such plasterwork to preserve in this country should have a guide to consult, and expense, in my view, shouldn't be a factor. If it's too expensive then it's better to do nothing. If you want to destroy stucco then you can use a lump hammer."

He laments, in obvious pain, how "wonderful plasterwork in Dublin has been completely destroyed" by clumsy and inadequate restoration work.

In 1999-2000 Smith and Henderson worked with conservation architect Paul Arnold on the ground floor of City Hall. A very interesting job, he assures. Then they worked on 35 North Great George's Street (the James Joyce Centre), and the Bacon Gallery in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Parnell Square.

He rhapsodises about the "transitional Rococo ceiling" in the latter, laments anew other wonders destroyed by big holes made in the ceiling for a chimney. They worked on first floor rooms in 10 Henrietta Street, where they found a papier mâché Rococo ceiling and for which work the room was given the Europa Nostra Award.

Architecture, Andrew Kelly points out, "is the only visible expression of how people thought and saw the world around them 200 and 300 years ago. It offers a continuity with the past and an aestheticism."

These days Smith and Henderson are working on a "huge project in Killeen Castle, Co Meath with the main contractor, Cleary Doyle from Wexford. It was originally built in 1180 by Hugh de Lacy, then went to the Cusacks and thence to the Plunketts who became the Earls of Fingal. I'm connected to the Earls of Fingal, on both sides!"

He marvels a bit at the history of it all, then explains that the keep, grand staircase and main reception rooms were gutted by a fire in 1980. "All of the ceilings must be laid out again, there's a lot of research work, and a lot of geometry involved. We'll have to take measurements and salvage everything there is and make up work anew."

He's not at all fazed