So a retirement present from a family that includes grandchildren is doing two jobs at once. It marks the end of the work for him, and it shows everybody else what the work actually looked like. A gift that only does the first job leaves the better half of the occasion on the table.
Look for a picture of the job
The useful photographs here are rarely portraits. They are the yard, or the machine he stood at. Old ones are fine. So are badly exposed ones taken on a works outing in 1987, which is often all that's survived from a trade nobody thought to document.
Painted, so it can be hung
A small, scratched photograph does not enlarge well, but painted it does. Upload it to the portrait flow and pick one of five styles. Check the watermarked results for the details the family will recognise; the upload page explains the free daily allowance. Canvas is £85.00, framed canvas £119.99, framed on paper £74.99 at A3.
Hung in a hallway it keeps doing the second job long after the party: the grandchildren walk past the thing he'd done every day for four decades.
The alternative in words
Where no photograph exists, the name print states it instead: his name, his trade, his years of service and where he worked, set in type. That is £14.99 in A4, £28.99 in A3, and £69.00 for a framed A3.
Ordering together
One person places the order and the family settles up afterwards; there is no group basket. Allow a fortnight. The press takes two to four working days and the courier another two to five, with UK delivery already in the price.
For a father rather than a grandfather, the guide to buying for a dad argues for words over a picture, and retirement gifts for men covers the same ground more generally. Who is retiring holds the rest.