Retirement Gifts
A retirement present is usually a whip-round. Somebody sends the envelope about the office, everyone puts in a few quid for the person who has been there thirty-odd years, and one poor soul gets landed with the job of buying something. The engraved pen has its place, and so does the joke mug about the golf, but a send-off after that length of service deserves something that outlasts the cake and the speeches in the canteen.
A photograph of a place that means something to them does that. Their home county, the stretch of coast they've brought the family to every summer since the kids were small, or the place they're finally going to have the time for now. My advice is to start with the place rather than the product, and the people who sat beside somebody for twenty or thirty years usually know exactly which place it is.
The places they'll finally have time for
What retirement really hands somebody back is their time. The walk on the beach on a Tuesday morning when everyone else is at their desk, the peninsula they've been saying they'd walk for fifteen years, or the county they're packing up and moving home to now that nothing is keeping them where they are. The photographs on this page are examples of that sort of place: Rossbeigh strand at first light, the lighthouse out at the end of the Sheep's Head peninsula in West Cork, and Derrynane Bay on a bright November morning.
If theirs is somewhere else, the collection is arranged by county, so you can head straight for Kerry or Cork or wherever it is through the Ireland by County page. Prints ship worldwide as well, which matters either way round: whether they're coming home to Ireland after years abroad, or heading off out of it.
One good thing beats five small things
A work collection usually comes to a decent sum, and the temptation is to spend it on five or six small things so there's plenty to unwrap on the day. Most of that will be gone by Christmas. Kept together, the same money buys one substantial piece, something large that goes up on a wall at home and stays there for good, with a card signed by everybody who put in.
And if the group can't settle on a place, or nobody fancies choosing art for someone else's house, a gift card passes the decision to the person leaving. They pick the photograph, the size, and the format themselves once the desk is cleared and the fuss has died down.
The practical bits
Nothing's produced until the order comes in, so leave two to three weeks between ordering and the day you want it in your hands. If the do is sooner than that, a card on the night saying it's on its way works perfectly well. Every photograph can be had framed, on canvas, or in acrylic, and the right choice comes down to their house and what they like.
Everything's checked against my specifications before it goes out the door, and anything damaged in transit gets replaced at no cost. Stuck on size, or torn between two images? Use the contact page.
More gift ideas and wall art: Wedding Gifts · First Anniversary Gifts · New Home & Housewarming Gifts · Irish Wall Art · Canvas Prints of Ireland · Framed Prints of Ireland
Cheers,
Peter