“Haere Mai” / “Welcome” : The President of the New Zealand International Exhibition requests the honour of the presence of W. Lamb-Smith Esq., at the Ceremony of Opening the Exhibition at Christchurch New Zealand on Thursday November 1st 1906.

Christchurch, NZ : [s.n.], July, 1906. Small quarto (255 x 175 mm), original thick grey paper covers, the front with printed greeting in Māori and English in silver lettering at head and foot, with a shaped chromolithograph onlay (155 x 110 mm, irregular) at the centre depicting the welcoming figures of a Māori woman and a European woman draped in the New Zealand flag, standing before a Māori carved gateway, the rear with a printed silver fern and small shaped chromolithograph of the Exhibition seal onlaid; inside is the tipped-in lithograph printed invitation itself, embellished with a Māori motif at each corner and two bands of silver ribbon across the top and bottom, with the name of the invitee in manuscript W. Lamb-Smith Esq. (William Lamb Smith, 1846-1910, Consul-General for Paraguay in Melbourne); a pristine example of this beautifully designed invitation.

Other examples are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library and the Christchurch City Libraries.