Kennedys' brush with history - from bristle to sable

Trade Names: M Kennedy & Sons is a leading art supplier today - but it began life making sweeping brushes over 100 years ago. Rose Doyle reports

The elegance of Harcourt Street, when not under siege from Luas works, makes it an ideal location for what is arguably the city's pre-eminent artists' suppliers.

M Kennedy & Sons has been carrying on its business at number 12 Harcourt Street since 1918 - and its customers didn't always come from the painterly community, its stock didn't always include easels, paints, canvases and the like.

Things began, in 1887, with brushes. That was when Michael Kennedy, a Kildare man in Dublin, set up a brush manufacturing company he named, fairly obviously, Kennedy Brushes. He located at 87 South William Street (now a multi-storey car-park) and his company hand-made brushes of all kinds, all of them from natural fibres. The strongest of these was hog or boar hair, for which bristle is now the generic term.

Kennedy's range, in the days when brushes were to housekeeping what the mobile is to today's handbag, included sweeping, scrubbing and glass bottle brushes. By the early 1900s they were a household name.

In 1918, an expanding Kennedy Brushes moved into the fine, late 18th century building that is number 12 Harcourt Street. Outbuildings to the rear housed the brush factory while the long-renowned Reed School of Piano occupied the first floor over the shop, which then as now, was on the ground floor.

Michael Kennedy married Margaret Ryan and two of their sons, James Thomas and Michael, took over the company in time. Kennedy Brushes supplied the early Dublin Gas Company and even designed the ubiquitous circular logo with the letters g-a-s.

Fionnbarr Kennedy, great-great-grandson of founder Michael Kennedy, sits in the gracious high ceilinged first floor Georgian rooms which today house a gallery to tell the family/business story. With his father, Ultan Kennedy, uncle Conor Kennedy and a staff of 10 he runs today's three-tiered company.

The Harcourt Street building, bought up by Kennedys over the years, now houses a shop, gallery and educational suppliers to schools section.

Fionnbarr Kennedy remembers his grandfather James Kenneth, something of a towering figure in the family story, with affection. "He was a wonderful gentleman, I remember wonderful times in his company."

The company was going strong in the 1940s under James Kenneth Kennedy's stewardship when the first shift in emphasis, and an easing towards today's business, happened. Kennedys began importing a small quantity of brushes from Winsor and Newton in the UK. Normally makers of artists' brushes, the firm had been directed by the British government, as part of the war effort, to make yard brushes and the like.

"My grandfather, James Kenneth, was a good artist," Fionnbarr says, "he studied under Sean Keating, but was needed in the business so didn't become a professional. When the war ended and Winsor and Newton went back to making artists' brushes, my grandfather, because of his strong liking for painting, decided to take on a small stock of artists' supplies."

His decision was the acorn from which today's company grew. The demise of Kennedy Brushes came in the 1950s, with progress and changing work practices. The advance of machine-manufactured goods made it harder to recruit apprentices who would become skilled brushmakers. A brush-making apprenticeship lasted seven years, the apprenticeship to become a machine operator lasted two weeks.

Regretfully, and sadly for staff who had been with the company for many years, James Kenneth Kennedy made the decision to end manufacturing and concentrate solely on the work of artists' supplier as the 1950s came to an end.

James Kenneth Kennedy married Marie Louise Hayden from Bray and they had five children. Ultan, father of Fionnbarr, was the first born of these and Conor the last. The artists' supply business, Fionnbarr says, "was built up through my grandfather's links with the artist community. As a good painter in his own right he empathised with both students and struggling artists. He painted all the time, himself too, mostly dramatic landscapes; he saw everything in vivid light and made strong use of colour. He painted all his life." James Kenneth Kennedy died in 1984 - just three years before the 1987 opening of the first floor gallery to mark the centenary of the company.

"My father, Ultan Kennedy, joined the company in the late 1950s," says Fionnbarr, "and went out on the road actively seeking business. That was when the advertising agencies were starting up and there was a whole new market for art supplies. He chased this market and was very successful.

"One of our best customers at the time was RTÉ, which got all its materials for graphics and the like from us. The company grew through the efforts of my grandfather and father, who constantly expanded the range. The premises were extended internally as we acquired more of the building over the years. Today's shop is much longer than it was originally and the buildings at the back are now used for stretching canvases.

"Pretty well all of the country's artists would have come in here over the years. We've Orpen's paint-box in the family. He gave it to my grandfather." He tells an anecdote which places their position in the business. "When, in the early 1980s, Winsor and Newton celebrated its 150th anniversary, it launched a special edition of the number 14 series seven Sable brush (watercolour). It cost 700 punts and we had one. It was sold within weeks to a leading Dublin artist who used it constantly." No amount of prodding will get him to reveal the artist's name.

Kennedys moved into the business of educational supplies when the advertising agencies moved towards use of commercial products such as letraset and computers. "At the same time," Fionnbarr points out, "increasing prosperity in the country meant art was becoming a larger part of the school curriculum. We've noticed, over the years, how budgets available for art supplies in schools have grown. We're now one of the leading school art room suppliers. We also notice that, in general, girls' schools use more art supplies than boys." This side of the business grew steadily through the l980s and l990s.

Another change came with opening of European links and a decision to trade more with the continent. "We went from stocking almost exclusively British brands to also stocking all the major continental brands, such as Sennelier, which is French, Maimeri, Italian, and Schminke, a German brand. It made a huge difference because it enormously increased the variety available to our customers."

Fionnbarr Kennedy grows more enthusiastic by the minute, admitting he could talk all day on the subject: he tells of oil colours in student quality and separate artists' quality (the former made to a uniformity of price, the latter for the higher end of market).

"We've four different brands of student oils and five different brands of artists' oils," he explains, "all of them slightly different so suit customers' needs." He feels that the two-room James Kenneth Kennedy Memorial Gallery makes "marvellous use of the two first floor rooms. We show mainly representational-style Irish artists, which was the sort of work my grandfather liked and my father still likes." The current exhibition is by the American Michael Coleman.

Fionnbarr Kennedy carries on the family tradition in more ways than one - he has inherited a talent for painting from his father and grandfather, in his case, in watercolours. He's very definite that the company will "continue as artists' suppliers. The gallery is a very nice addition to what we do but the primary business is the shop." The father of two children, he says his eldest, 11-year-old Ciara, "is determined to come into the business with her dad." Nine-year-old Cian hasn't expressed a view as yet. One way or another, the future is secure for M Kennedy and Sons Ltd -, though perhaps with a vital change in the name if Ciarahas her way.