A booming specialised craft business is profiting from tradition and cementing a niche for itself in the restoration of historic buildings.

Ornate Interiors, which produces traditional complex plasterwork for ceilings, has gained a reputation for its sympathetic restoration of properties such as St George's Hall in Bradford and Temple Newsam in Leeds.

It has also been the restorer of choice for fine Victorian railway stations in Huddersfield, Leeds and Newcastle.

This, combined with work for affluent private clients, has helped the 16-year-old firm drive up its turnover from £440,000 to £720,000 over the past 12 months with further aggressive growth up to £1 million anticipated by next year.

The firm's bottom line has also been boosted by lucrative work for a string of celebrity clients, virtually all of whom seem to be so precious and privacy-loving that they make Ornate Interiors swear an oath of secrecy not to disclose their

identities.

Many celebrities are from the music industry but they tend not to be the here today gone tomorrow variety of teenaged warbler but the more substantial long-standing type of rock star. One client is a guitarist with a veteran Irish rock band. Another is an international singer-songwriter, again from Ireland. Beyond those cryptic clues no one is allowed to know their identities.

Ronnie Clifford, who founded the 12-strong firm in Stanningley, near Pudsey, in 1989, prefers to talk about the public and commercial refurbishments rather than the stately piles of the famous.

And the project list is certainly impressive: Bradford's Midland Hotel, the Queen's and the Metropole in Leeds and the swish Le Meridien Hotel in Belgium. Other prestigious jobs have included Euro Disney and the Akash in Cleckheaton, said to be Britain's biggest curry house.

One of its most challenging endeavours was Planet Hollywood at Gatwick Airport which required a complex curved plaster structure.

The company has produced cornices, dado rails, mouldings and other paraphernalia for castles, churches and other historically significant buildings using the traditional sand and lime technique. All are produced at Ornate's factory and then fixed in situ by its team.

Around a fifth of its business involves selling classy plaster work to members of the public.

"We get a lot of work through the architects who are doing high quality work," said Mr Greenwood. "It's such a skilled trade so what we're doing is going back even further with traditional methods. We've taken on one apprentice and now we plan to take on another school leaver and train them up.

"We're very busy at the moment but everybody in the company is capable of doing every single job. We've never failed on a job yet and we always get a result by hook or by crook."

Which should please the customers, especially shrinking violet celebrities who are oh so anxious about not getting their names in the paper.