Michael Stapleton

Michael Stapleton (born Dublin, Ireland, in 1747, died 8 August 1801, in Dublin) is regarded as having been the most skilled stuccodore working in the neoclassical or "Adam" style that dominated Dublin interior decoration in the final decades of the 18th century.

Stapleton was born in Dublin, the son of George Stapleton, who may have been a plasterer by trade. He married Frances Todderick, the daughter of a Dublin timber merchant, in 1774. They lived for a few years in No. 59 Camden Street, until about 1781. Being a Catholic, he was not allowed become a member of a Guild (this law was relaxed in 1793). In 1784 he was working in Trinity College where some of the exceptional contributions he has made to stucco work are to be seen. The Stapletons had four children: Robert who died young; George took over the family business when his father died; Margaret married a stone-cutter called John Taylor; and Mary married into a family of paper-stainers and house painters.

The family moved to Mecklenburg Street, then associated with those in the building trade. Stapleton associated with the master-builder, Robert West, the progenitor of the Dublin School of plasterwork of the 1760s. When West died Stapleton was his executor. He inherited his pattern books and both modelled himself on, and refined the style of, this central figure in the shaping of architecture and design in Dublin and in the country.

He died in 1801 and is buried at Malahide Abbey, just outside Dublin City. After his death his son George continued his work, a famous example being the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle. Two of his grandchildren married members of the Conlan brewing family of Dublin.

Stapleton's name has become synonymous with the elegant ornamental plasterwork of the late 18th-century townhouse. His collection of decorative designs was presented to the National Library of Ireland in 1940 by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, which enabled previously unknown works by him to be identified. In connection with prominent Dublin buildings he was recorded by the Georgian Society Records (Dublin 1909–1913), and was credited with "much of the fine work in Dublin at this period".Sacheverell Sitwell commented that: "...the Dublin artisans (of the period) were second to none in Europe, and the reader need only glance through the volumes of the Georgian Society to feel certain of this." The first studies specifically devoted to Stapleton were published in articles by C. P. Curran in 1939–40, who added significantly to the canon of Stapleton's executed works.

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