TradeNames: A quintessential Dubliner tells Rose Doyle how he started a picture framing shop on Capel Street and developed the business

Brendan Dunne came to the business of picture framing by an accidental, circuitous route. He's stayed in the business for 41 years in the city he was born in 62 years ago. A quintessential Dubliner, he's a quintessential part of the end of Capel Street in which he has his shop too.

The story of the shop and of his time trading there is as much the tale of a life as it is of a business. Man and shop have the same, much appreciated, quietly enduring quality.

Brendan Dunne digresses a lot, like all good storytellers and like life. His father, he says, was a great storyteller.

"I was born in the Coombe in 1943 and went to St Kevin's NS in Blackpitts. Later I went to Rathmines College of Commerce to do bookkeeping and commerce. I didn't like it and moved to Capel St Tech, which is gone now, to do woodwork, metalwork and art. I was about 15. We used do gymnastics in Bolton St. I got a bike, had it a week, parked it outside this place and it was stolen. This place was a junk shop then, sold everything."

So much for early encounters with 79 Capel Street.

He didn't like Capel St Tech either. "I was finding my way," he explains. "The education thing came from my mother, who had 10 children. I was the seventh son and she reckoned she'd give me the chance of a schooling."

It wasn't all academics. He did a lot of running, with Donore Harriers, and won an American college scholarship. He didn't take it up. "People in those days didn't emigrate just to go running," he explains. He does wonder, though, how it would have been.

The picture framing came up when he saw an ad in the paper. "I tried for a chimney sweeping job first," he says, not a man to omit detail, "but your man, the sweep, said I wasn't cut out for it. I worked for a year too in Tongue & Taggarts, where Bono has his place now, making shore casts, pouring hot metal. It spurts all over the place."

The picture framing ad was for a job in Aungier Street/Whitefriar Street. It suited him well.

"It was a five-day week and we'd holy days off because the boss was that way inclined. The job was good but the money was bad; I got £1.5.0d a week when I started and the most I ever earned was £3 a week. When I reached 21 the boss knew he'd have to give me more money and I could see the writing was on the wall."

At 21, Brendan Dunne set up as a picture framer on his own, in a room in Aungier Street over Appleby Jewellers.

"It was a tenement house," he says. "I was at the very top and used have to carry the frame mouldings all the way up. We used have toss schools in the street, 20-30 fellas of us, gambling. I made money and lost it and came to realise I'd more to lose than win so I gave that up. After a while Appleby wanted me out and used stick newspapers under the door with ads for other places marked! That's how I found this place."

It was still a junk shop when he moved in; he threw out "half the stuff. I was no better off than I had been," he says. "The rent was £5 a week, which was expensive, so I took up pool collecting to help pay it. I'd 125 people on my books. They were all over the city and I got 3d for each one. I'd to work hard. Things didn't look up for years. I was caught in a Catch 22 situation: all the moulding stuff was imported from Belgium and they'd only sell you £500 worth at a time, which was like £1 million to me at the time. So if I hadn't the money I couldn't get the mouldings and couldn't work."

So he sought out small jobs, setting off on foot early every morning to places as far flung as Terenure, soliciting work. "I was shy. I'd just ask small shops did they want frames made. I charged as little as I could. It might be 6pm before I'd get back here to start working on them."

Charging little would rebound on him, later.

He remembers a big job, a tender for the framing of 6,220 copies of the 1916 Proclamation for schools around the country. His ex-boss promised to sell him an old moulding machine for £45 and Brendan Dunne tendered 2/6d. to do the job. The ex-boss tendered £1. Dunne got the job, the offer of the machine was withdrawn.

"I'd six weeks to do the job," he says, "so I went to a Chinese fella called Wong in Nassau Street and he loaned me a machine for £100. I got a place in Abbey Street, got my brothers and fellas I knew in to help - even my father who hadn't worked for 25 years and my best mate who was a postman. I got the job done and when I got the money I paid them all."

Then there were the artists, good customers but not the best payers. Brendan Dunne understood this, too well maybe.

"From the early days they used come," he says, "people who're big names now. They were starting off and couldn't afford frames and I was cheap. I'd barter with them and they'd leave me a few pictures to sell instead of money when they collected their order. If I'd kept some I'd be a millionaire now!"

As if on cue a customer arrives with a Markey Robinson. Painted on a piece of cardboard it's like many Robinson brought in himself in the old days, Brendan Dunne says.

Things began to look up in 1974. First Veritas gave him the framing business for their religious pictures, then Clerys. Steady work - "but practically no money for the hours I put into it", he says.

Brendan Dunne married when he was 28, to Jean who was 21 at the time. She always did, and still does, look 20 years younger than him, he says. They have one daughter and three sons, all of whom "served time here", he says.

"They've all got different jobs now but the framing's here for them if they want it, at any time. That's why I stay, why I put so much into it. But there's more future in what they're at."

Things have changed in Capel Street and in framing. Customers can't park outside with pictures they way they used to. "They buy pictures in Roches Stores, take them out of the frame and put their own picture in now," he says.

He bought 79 Capel Street "long ago; took the chance when it was going to be sold. It's an old building and 10 years ago it was listed. So now it's my pension."

He won't be staying another 40 years, he says, reckons he's got about 15 good years left. His mother died a few years ago at 90. His father, who liked walking according to his seventh son, was knocked down and died when he was 86. He's continued running himself, all through the years, says he's the "fourth best in the world" in his age group. His eight brothers run too, Irish champions all of them, he says. Only now Brendan Dunne has a knee problem.

"I've worked on a foot guillotine for so long, cutting frames, that it's giving trouble. I've been one day sick in 40 years but there will come a time I'm going to have to walk away.

"I'll pack up then, travel the world with Jean. Capel Street is completely different now, by the time I go I won't miss it. People move in and you don't have time to know them before they go again. Everything's different."