Chapel banners unveiled

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Hanging either side of the Chapel, the house banners are a familiar sight to Dio students, teachers and parents, past and present. In 2022, a project funded by the Diocesan Alumnae Association saw the banners replaced with new designs created by artist Elizabeth Jenkins with input from this year’s house leaders. On 5 November during Founders’ Day celebrations, they were officially unveiled.

In February 2022, Diocesan Director of Development Angela Coe contacted Elizabeth Jenkins with a request. The current Chapel banners were showing signs of age. Would she design and create some new ones to replace the set she’d made 30 years ago?

Elizabeth was delighted to take on the project and subsequently spoke with Penny Tucker, President of the Diocesan Alumnae Association, to get a more detailed brief.

“This project was just ideal for me,” says Elizabeth. “I enjoy research and it incorporated many of my design ideas; it involved working with lovely fabrics, beads, threads etc, and combined drawing, painting and sewing, both by hand and machine. It allowed me to be as creative as I wanted, using both old and new techniques.”

As part of the design process, Elizabeth spent some weeks researching the School’s founders and looking at heraldry. In early May, she flew up from Dunedin to meet with Penny, Dio Chaplain Rev’d Rob, senior staff, and the Dio house leaders to present her ideas (including initial sketches and fabric samples) and invite the house leaders for their input.

“The girls were understandably unsure about how to approach the designs. One or two made some sketches of their ideas and the rest were happy to be guided by me. We went over the basic parts and the general layout of each banner, and I explained the type of construction I would use.”

The house leaders discussed their idea of including a secret message on each banner. To this end, Elizabeth designed a new version of the ‘Dio rose’, which has become a recurring motif around the School. Her rose design is based on the pentagonal shape of a Tudor rose but using the colours of each house.

“Despite most of the houses having had male founders, this was a way of bringing a feminine touch to the banners,” she explains. “The roses are all embroidered and beaded like small jewels and open up to hold the secret message inside. The girls wrote each message, which I printed onto a fine parchment-like silk. These are finished with twin needle stitching and roll up inside in the form of a mini scroll with finials. The roses are closed with small domes.”

Measuring 1200mm x 700mm, to fit the existing rods and finials, the banners are mainly made from pure cotton quilting fabrics. But Elizabeth also tried to include a wide variety of fabric types and sewing techniques – printed cotton, satin cotton, tulles and nets, French needle-run lace, fine gold kid and velum, cotton velvet and ribbons, guipure lace trim, silver and gold fabric, plus a small amount of pure silk for the scrolls hidden in the roses.

“A range of stitches were used in the appliqué, such as Assisi embroidery, machine embroidery, twin needle work, gold and silver couching etc. Handmade cords are featured throughout, plus lace edging and decorative trims.

“In each banner, there’s easily one kilometre of thread,” she says. “And they’ve all been protected with Scotchguard to inhibit dirt and fading.”

A key requirement for the project, Elizabeth explains, was to use bright colours. The fronts of the banners feature the two main colours of each house. The house name and emblems of the shield/crest, the scroll and motto, and the new Dio rose are appliquéd onto a background. Most of the smaller shapes were hand sewn and overlaid with tulle or net, which adds a softening effect to the colours and holds everything firmly in place. The Dio rose, the three mitres and other smaller decorative features are also highly beaded with Swarovski crystals and small beads and pearls.

The House names are all created from gold kid leather and covered with a coloured net. The heraldic scrolls are made from parchment-coloured fabric with the mottos appliquéd in black Roman lettering.

While the name, shield, motto and scroll had to remain as close as possible to the originals, there was room for some variation. Elizabeth wanted each banner to be a small individual work of art, with symbolic touches to represent the character of the person whose house bears their name.

The back (reverso) features each house’s colours in a left-to-right diagonal. The base has an added chevron of one of the eight colours. This is decorated above the tassel with a geometric shape – using the tassel cord to frame a mini painted image of the school cat, Ollie. To give each banner individuality, a matching design was chosen: stars for Neligan, hearts in the form of flowers for Eliza Edwards, and fleur de lys for Cowie. Each reverso

was machine quilted and backed with a fine cotton batting by Bronwyn Hamilton from Darfield, Canterbury, an expert in the field.

A significant challenge of this project was the timeframe, as each of the eight banner fronts took at least 200 hours to complete. In the 21 weeks available to Elizabeth between May 2022 and Founders’ Day in early November, she dedicated more than 2000 hours to their creation.

INCORPORATING INDIVIDUAL TOUCHES FOR EACH HOUSE

Elizabeth devoted many hours to researching the people behind Diocesan’s houses so she could create meaningful additions to the banners. Created in 1922, four of the houses (Mitchelson, Mary Pulling, Cochrane and Neligan) are named after the School’s early founders. Four more houses (Eliza Edwards, Roberton, Cowie and Selwyn) were added in 1992. To distinguish the old houses from the new, Elizabeth used a vertical colour division for the background colours of the original houses and a horizontal division for the newer houses.

She was able to study the family archives of Stephen Cochrane’s granddaughter Jill Woodward, an orchestral friend of hers, and together they designed the oval red shield with a white horse passant [walking].

“We also found that Cochrane has a second motto, which was discreetly

WHO IS ELIZABETH JENKINS?

A former teacher, Elizabeth is a member of the Otago Art Society. She studied floristry and theatrical design in London and still-life painting in oils in Florence. Her subjects include New Zealand birds, historic cottages, flowers and portraits. She’s also designed costumes for ballets and operas, and played violin in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin orchestras. Her favourite interests are designing and building houses and gardens.

Elizabeth has had a long and warm association with Diocesan, as a Dio parent and a relief teacher from 1988 to 1992. Elizabeth has made four sets of ecclesiastical vestments for Diocesan chaplains and created the altar frontal in the Chapel. In 2003, she designed and created the silk Centennial cope (ceremonial cloak) for Rev’d Win Blyth. Two years prior, she was invited to submit a conceptual design for the Centennial Building window. She has created wedding flowers for Old Girls and made a number of graduation ball gowns.

“I owe a lot to my association with Diocesan School since I became a member of the school family in the late 1980s when my daughter Gillian started at Dio aged 12.”

When Elizabeth met with the house leaders back in Term 1 to talk about

added to the main motto scroll. An additional decorative theme of fabric ovals and horseshoes swirling from the Dio rose up around the shield to the house name helps to illustrate the meaning of ‘horsepower’, the house leaders’ secret message.”

With the help of the family, Elizabeth revisited the original Royal Charter of Sir Edward Mitchelson. On this banner, she was eager to use the beautiful whole heraldic crest, instead of just the traditional shield.

“For Edwards house, we introduced an important change by adding the name Eliza,” she says. “And with input from Rev’d Rob, and the students, we researched and included two new mottos – for Eliza Edwards, ‘With service comes joy’ and for Mary Pulling, ‘Faith Service Adventure’.”

In one of the squares on the new Roberton banner, Elizabeth included a small reference to the beautiful foliage design on the new Performing Arts Centre. The patterns add a feminine touch to include Ernest Roberton’s niece, Elizabeth, who was headmistress from 1966-1972.

“Bishop Selwyn, after whom Selwyn house is named, travelled around New Zealand extensively on foot, horseback, and by canoe and ship. We chose the circle as a symbol of travel and added nautical knots and freshwater pearls to the rose on this banner.”

ideas for the new Chapel banner designs, she noted that Ollie the school cat featured prominently in all their discussions. Subsequently, she painted a picture of Ollie and each banner has his image replicated and sewn above the tassle. At the unveiling of the banners on Founders’ Day, Elizabeth presented the girls with a gift – when unwrapped it revealed the picture that she had painted, framed for them to hang in their senior common room. They were delighted and the presentation of this thoughtful gift was a very special moment in the day. Unfortunately, in the way of cats who are a bit of a law unto themselves, Ollie was not in attendance to witness being honoured in this way.