Trade Names: The Davis name has been promiscuous in the number of trades it has tried but has always remained faithful to Capel Street. Rose Doyle reports

As Capel Street, cutting its swathe to the river's edge, is to the heart of Dublin 1 then Gerald Davis - painter, gallery owner, critic, patron of the arts, sometime businessman and oft time personifier of Leopold Bloom - is to the heart of Capel Street. Man and boy, he's been an essential part of the street for more than 50 years since when, as the only child of Sydney and Doris Davis, he first began to help behind the counter of the family business at 11 Capel Street.

And it's exactly 50 years since, as a 16-year old with an Inter Cert from St Andrew's College, he became a full-time part of the business. Much has changed and much has stayed the same and through it all Gerald Davis has been a passionate, opinionated champion of Capel Street - and by extension the rest of the city.

He tells the Davis/Capel Street story with the zeal he brings to everything. "My grandfather came from Lithuania and got his naturalisation papers in 1904," he says. "He would have arrived, like all of that wave of Jews , in 1883-4. He brought his wife over later, which wasn't uncommon. My father and the rest of the family were born in St Kevin's Road, Dublin 8, which was an all-Jewish street at one time. My mother, Doris Miller, was born in Longwood Avenue, which was almost all Jewish too."

Sydney Davis left school at 14 and went to work. "The details are scant," his son admits, "but like everyone else at that time he started selling stuff on a weekly basis - clothes, household goods, blankets. He travelled. He discovered Portmarnock. He used go to Kildare. My first memories of my Dad were of him going off in the car to sell around the country for the week."

Sydney Davis eventually bought a small shop in Liffey Street where, as the second World War ended, he sold "small wares; shellac, hobnails for boots, razor blades. After a few years he bought in here, number 11 Capel Street, which had sitting tenants.

"He was by then wholesaling toys and fancy goods, and he rented rooms to a Mr Barrett from Birmingham, who used take orders for rubber stamps. They became partners when my Dad, on his travels around the country, began getting rubber stamp orders for Mr Barrett. But Mr Barrett went back to Birmingham and, in 1950, Barret Davis & Co became The Rubber Stamp Shop and, gradually, the biggest seller and manufacturer in the country of rubber stamps."

By the 1960s, and with the range of the business extended, the name had changed to Davis Stationery. "My Dad bought another place up the street, at number 25 Capel Street and rented a place in Strand Street from where he imported and distributed toys. This left the running of the Capel Street business to myself and a Mr Murphy, who'd worked with my Dad and essentially ran things. I was supposed to be the boss but, I mean. . ."

What Gerald Davis means is that he was a half-hearted businessman at best, an established painter by this time and not averse to telling his father how he felt. "I said to him 'I'm not enjoying this business', and he said to me 'so, who enjoys business?', which is a typical Jewish answer. I'd been painting and exhibiting for a long time by then but he thought this a bad idea. My mother, who would have been interested, died before my first exhibition."

He's grateful to the business though; "at one stage we had 23 employees - retail, wholesale and manufacturing. It educated and fed my family."

In 1970, when the sitting tenants moved out of the first floor at 11 Capel Street, Gerald Davis opened an art gallery there. "I thought it would be a nice thing to do," he says. Chief Justice Cearbhaill O Dalaigh did the opening honours; the show was of drawings by Edward Delaney. Twenty-five years later, in 1995, then President Mary Robinson opened a jubilee exhibition showing work by 25 artists.

"I learned about the practicalities of business from my father," Gerald Davis admits, "which is why I've been able to make a go of the gallery." Davis Stationery Ltd carried on until 1981 and the death of Sydney Davis.

"I let it go when he died," his son explains, "and through the 1980s rented it to different tenants. Towards the end of the 1980s Frank Mooney, a guy up the street who'd worked for my father, took it over and continued trading as The Rubber Stamp Shop. After a while he bought 14 Capel Street and moved the shop there. When that happened I made a total commitment to the art world side of things and moved the gallery to the ground floor. It's nice that there's continuity and that the Rubber Stamp Shop is just up the street." He remembers and loves it well. "I can remember when there was two-way traffic and horses and carts in Capel Street. I've seen it seriously neglected over the years, take an awful lot of bashing and neglect by the corporation and council, historically."

He warms to his theme. "I think the kiosks by the river are disgraceful, an affront to anybody. A visual affront to the city. Totally contrived. Nobody wants them."

He's unforgiving, but optimistic too because "in the last year there's been a huge amount of refurbishment and rebuilding on the part of private people in the street. There are some marvellous people on the city council and some good employees but there's a distinct lack of vision. Our city fathers are to blame for what's happening. There isn't the culture of a pit pony in the lot of them."

Passion far from spent he talks about his pride in the gallery. "The present Charlie Cullen exhibition, which is the best Joyce exhibition in Dublin, is very successful. He first showed with me in 1971. There weren't many galleries in the city then. Many artists who're now big names in the country had their early shows here - Charlie Harper, John Kelly, Edward Delaney, John Devlin, Martin Gale - they've all gone on to become very well known and regarded.

"I think we did great things in this gallery and I think it's been vastly underestimated. I was the first gallery to show quality craft work and sculpture. My policy over the years has been to show the work I believed in. Now I show only paintings. My taste would definitely ecshew the so-called conceptual; I'd radically oppose it. Also, I've always run the gallery with the policy of showing work people can buy, sensibly priced for people who want to build a collection of their own. As a painter myself I'm aware of all aspects."

He's adamant that, in the 30-odd years he's been running the gallery, his standards haven't changed. "I've shown avant-garde stuff here but it's been good quality and that's my main criteria." He says he's always been loath to show his own work in the gallery. "My own career is very successful and now, after 40 years, my work is sought-after and appreciated. The future? I've never known what's going to happen next year, what I'm going to do."