New Zealand Centennial Exhibition

[1] [2] [3] [4] The exhibition took for its site a location at Rongotai[5] in Wellington, Edmund Anscombe designing the buildings and grounds in the Art Deco style.

The submission of Eileen Olive Deste (1908–1986) included a testimonial from John A. Lee, under-secretary for housing in the Labour government, for a housing-exhibition project in the Kirkcaldie and Stains gallery in 1937.

Deste flew above the site in a small plane to take aerial shots, a terrifying but exciting experience, as she later remembered.

Much of the photography at the exhibition came from the camera of an employee, Neville d’Eresby (Des) Aickin, while Deste did the processing and printing at her studio.

[7] In 1939-1940 potters Olive Jones and Elizabeth Matheson demonstrated and sold work at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition for six months.