1 Pound Bank of New Zealand

The Bank of New Zealand was a private commercial bank, not a government institution, when this note was issued — colonial-era New Zealand had no central bank, and private banks operated their own currency under charter. Bradbury Wilkinson's production quality for colonial issuers during this period was consistently high, their intaglio work competitive with anything De La Rue was producing at the time.

The ten-year span of this issue reflects a relatively stable printing contract, though individual notes are undated in the conventional sense, making precise attribution within the 1888–1898 window difficult without reference to serial number ranges.