Stuccowork in Ireland has become so synonymous with the rococo period and the Francini brothers that other eras and practitioners tend to be overlooked. But a rather charming exhibition, which opened this week, attempts not just to look at the history of Irish decorative plaster but also to encourage its continued use today.
Organised by Lindis Page, who has put together similar shows at the same venue in the capital, Flights of Fancy turns out to be as much an occasion of mourning as celebration, since the examples of stuccowork on show come predominantly from demolished buildings. There are, for example, sections of cornicing from two great Dublin houses lost within living memory: Turvey and Frascati. These pathetic scraps demonstrate how much trouble was taken over relatively minor details of the buildings' decoration and how callously the work was subsequently treated.
Their story is repeated throughout the show and could quite understandably discourage any competent craftsman from taking trouble again, knowing the indifference likely to await his efforts from subsequent generations.
Flights of Fancy includes photographs of the Father Mathew Hall in Dublin, whose future is in doubt despite the wonderful plastered proscenium arch made in 1909 by John Ryan of Upper Abbey Street to the designs of A. Scott. This could yet go the same way as the Irish House bar on Wood Quay, demolished in the 1960s. Thankfully, the late-19th-century pub's wonderful polychromatic frieze was saved and preserved by Guinness; from it, the figure of Daniel O'Connell has been included in the present show.
While Irish plasterwork was unquestionably at its finest and most fanciful around the middle of the 18th century, the first examples known date from considerably earlier. The first extant work, in the Ormonde Manor House in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, dates from 1565 and offers a variety of decorative patterns and details including coats-of-arms, portraits and allegorical figures. The National Museum owns an extremely elaborate overmantle which came originally from Old Bawn, Tallaght and carries the date 1635, as well as a scene showing workmen constructing a castle.
By the start of the following century, the use of plasterwork for interior decoration had become commonplace, but it was only with the arrival in the late 1730s of Italian brothers Paul and Philip Francini, who had already been working in England, that Irish stuccoed interiors started to receive the exuberant treatment for which they are still famous.
The period in which rococo enjoyed its greatest popularity here was really quite short; by 1771 the neo-classicist Michael Stapleton was reported as working in Powerscourt House in a much more restrained Adamesque style than his immediate predecessors. While classical plasterwork was commonplace in Ireland, less of it has survived than might be expected, perhaps because it is less immediately engaging than rococo.
Flights of Fancy has plenty of salvaged details from late 18th and early 19th-century buildings, such as a basket of fruit and garland made by Stapleton for 35 North Great George's Street. The show is also replete with instances of standard domestic plasterwork from the 19th century, the glory of which is rarely appreciated both because it can be seen so often and also because the craftsmen's attention to detail has usually been obscured by overpainting.
Were this simply an exhibition of lost glories, Flights of Fancy might have a limited appeal. But there is a section devoted to encouraging visitors to understand the character of decorative plasterwork themselves. Not only are the practicalities of constructing and conserving plaster explored but there is even the possibility of making individual pieces on site, either modelling by hand or using a mould. Perhaps during the course of the exhibition, this could lead to another Stapleton or Francini being discovered.
Flights of Fancy: Decorative Plasterwork in Dublin can be seen at 4 Castle Street, Dublin 2 until May 26th. Tel: 01-4756911 for further information