Stephen and Stitt, the lions that are key symbols of the bank (Photo: HSBC Malaysia)
Visitors to HSBC Malaysia’s new head office at Tun Razak Exchange, Kuala Lumpur, will be greeted by Stephen and Stitt, the lions that are key symbols of the bank. Unlike the bronze sculptures that can be found guarding its offices around the globe, the pair at Menara IQ sit majestically in a mosaic mural in the lobby of their current home.
The mural was previously housed on the top floor of the bank’s flagship branch at Lebuh Ampang for more than 12 years. “They had to remove an entire wall and bring it down with cranes,” says mosaic artist Jacklyne Chung, who was commissioned to make the piece in 2010.
Chung studied art and design at Monash University, Melbourne, but picked up mosaic work on her own. She created the lions — nicknamed Stephen and Stitt after two HSBC senior managers in Shanghai in the 1920s — using glazed tiles, broken glass, rocks and stones that she made and collected over time.
“This is the first time it’s open to public view. When they put the plaque with my name beside the mural, it felt like all the late nights for over 10 months and the cuts on my fingers were worth it,” says Chung, whose creation measures 6ft by 10ft and weighs more than three tonnes. Her lions sit against the KL skyline, with hills and kampung scenes embedded in the scene.
She says the process of nipping and chipping the pieces to fit is therapeutic. “And having all the broken pieces is like life. You need to put all the brokenness together to make a beautiful picture. But unlike life, mosaic art is something that lasts.”
How Stephen and Stitt came to be dates back to 1921, when plans were drawn up to build a new HSBC Shanghai office. Chief manager Alexander Stephen, impressed by the stone lion at Venice’s Arsenal, the heart of the Italian city’s naval industry, had two bronze lions cast in England and shipped to China for the opening of the bank building in 1923. The roaring big cat was named after him and the calm, poised one, after Shanghai manager Gordon Stitt.
Replicas of the pair were commissioned and placed at the entrance of HSBC’s new Hong Kong headquarters in 1935. Symbolic of good fortune, growth and prosperity, the lions started appearing in the bank’s advertising campaigns in the 1960s. They first appeared on HSBC banknotes in 1973 and, two years later, the lion money box for children was launched.
In 2001, casts were taken of the Hong Kong Stephen and Stitt to make replicas for the pair that now stand guard at the bank’s global HQ in London. In 2017, HSBC redesigned all its credit, debit and ATM cards with a new visual identity featuring the lion. Rolled out in more than 30 countries, the single design, “interpreted authentically in pixelated form”, set the cards apart from others by using an iconic symbol of the bank.
This article first appeared on Mar 27, 2023 in The Edge Malaysia.
