Personalised horse gifts

Three of the things we make are personalised, and they ask three different things of you: a name, a photograph you want painted, or a photograph you want printed as it is. Which one suits depends less on budget than on what you already have on your phone.

The name print, from £14.99

The one that needs nothing but a name. You type the horse's name, the breed and the yard, and the print sets itself in editorial type while you watch — no photograph, no upload, about ten seconds. It is the cheapest way in at £14.99 for an A4 poster, £9.99 if you just want the digital file, and it runs up through framed prints to a 50x70cm canvas at £139.

It is also the safest gift when you are buying for someone whose horse you have never photographed, which is most people buying for a friend.

The portrait, from £19.99

You upload a photograph of the horse and it comes back painted. This is the piece people buy for the horse they own rather than the horse they admire, and it is the one that goes above a fireplace rather than in a tack room. An A4 poster is £19.99, a 30x40cm canvas £85, and the larger framed canvases run to £179.99.

There are five styles and they are not interchangeable: oil for the traditional sporting-art look, watercolour for something softer and paler, charcoal when the horse is dark or the photograph is monochrome, and pop art or impressionist when the room is modern. A grey horse in watercolour and a bay in oil are two quite different objects on a wall.

You see the painting before you pay. That matters more than it sounds: a photograph taken in a dark barn in February does not always become a good portrait, and it is better to find that out before the money changes hands than after.

The photograph, printed properly, from £14.99

Sometimes the photograph is already the thing. A horse at a gate in low sun, a rider's first rosette, the last picture anybody took. Printing it as it is — on paper, canvas, wood or metal — costs from £14.99 for A4 and £51.49 for a 30x40cm canvas.

The honest constraint is resolution. A screenshot of an Instagram post will not survive being printed at 70x100cm, and no amount of processing fixes it.

The thing to know before you personalise anything

Personalised gifts are not covered by the fourteen-day right to cancel that applies to almost everything else you buy online in Britain, and most shops do not tell you that until after you have paid.

The rule is in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. Regulation 28 is titled "Limits of application: circumstances excluding cancellation", and at 28(1)(b) it excludes "the supply of goods that are made to the consumer's specifications or are clearly personalised". A print with a horse's name on it is made to your specification the moment you press the button, so the usual cooling-off period simply does not apply to it. That is the law, not a shop policy.

Which puts the weight on one thing: check the spelling before you order. We cannot reprint a name that was typed wrong, and neither can anybody else. If you are unsure whether the horse is Bramble or Brambles, ask. It is a less awkward conversation than the other one.

Faulty or damaged is different, and always has been — that is a separate statutory right and personalisation does not touch it.

Stable name or show name

This is the single most common way a personalised horse gift goes wrong, and it is worth thirty seconds of thought. British yards run two names at once. The show name is the long one on the schedule and the passport — Gallant Endeavour, Rowan's Pride. The stable name is what everybody actually says in the yard, and it is usually shorter, softer and frequently edible: the Nutmegs, Biscuits and Pickles of the world.

Put the show name on a print and it reads like paperwork. Put the stable name on it and it reads like the horse. Owners almost always want the stable name, and the exceptions are usually competition pieces where the rosette and the show name belong together. If the horse might ever race, the naming rules are stricter still and we have set them out on the horse name generator.

What makes a photograph work

For both the portrait and the straight print, the photograph does most of the work, and three things decide whether it survives being enlarged.

Light. Outdoors on an overcast day is close to ideal. Direct midday sun leaves hard shadows across the face, and a dark barn forces the camera to guess. Angle. Slightly below the eye and square to the shoulder flatters almost every horse; directly above shortens the neck and makes even a good horse look ordinary. Resolution. A photograph straight off a phone is usually fine. One that has been sent through WhatsApp, saved from Instagram, or screenshotted has already been compressed, and enlarging it to 70x100cm will show that.

If in doubt, send the original file rather than a forwarded copy. It is the difference between a print that holds up at arm's length and one that only works from across the room.

Which format, for which wall

Paper suits a tack room, a hallway or anywhere that might get rearranged; it is the cheapest to frame yourself and the easiest to post. Canvas suits a living room, needs no glass and no framing, and is what most portraits are ordered on. Metal and wood are the ones people buy for a specific spot they have already measured — metal for a modern room, wood for a warmer one.

On size: A4 is a desk or a shelf, A3 is a hallway, 30x40cm and above is a wall in its own right. The most common regret is going one size too small, because a horse is a large animal and a small print makes it look like a pet.

Personalising for the occasion

The occasion usually decides the wording more than the format does, and there are four that come up again and again in equestrian gifting.

A birthday. The horse's name and the year is enough; adding the yard dates it nicely without making it a plaque. Our other horse birthday gifts sit alongside the personalised ones.

A retirement. Either the horse's retirement or the rider's. When it is the horse, people usually want the years of the partnership on it — "2009–2026" says more than any sentence. See retirement gifts.

A loss. A memorial keepsake is the one to get right, and it is worth reading the horse memorial gifts page before ordering: the wording conventions there are different, and a date can be the wrong choice depending on how recent it is.

A first pony. For a child's pony the stable name is almost always the right answer, and a smaller format works better than a large one — it goes in a bedroom, not a living room.

A rider who competes may want the discipline on it — dressage, showjumping, eventing — and a horse owner buying for themselves almost never does. That difference is worth asking about before you type anything.

What we do not make

Worth saying plainly, because a lot of the results for this search are general gift shops. We print: paper, canvas, wood, metal, mugs, water bottles and greetings cards. We do not do engraved jewellery, horseshoe keepsakes, hoodies, stable door signs or name plates. If that is what you are after, one of the equestrian retailers will serve you better and faster than we will.

Made to order, and what that means for timing

Nothing here is held in stock. Each piece is printed when you order it, which is what makes the personalisation possible and what puts a production step in front of the postage. That is fine with a fortnight in hand and tight the week before Christmas, which is the reason the ordering dates below are worth a look rather than a guess.

Which one, for whom

If they own the horse and you can get a photograph, the portrait. If they own the horse and you cannot, the name print. If the photograph is already the point — a rosette, a last ride, a foal — print the photograph. And if you are buying for someone who loves horses but does not have one, the name print does not work; look at gifts for horse lovers instead.

Everything is made to order in the UK and nothing is held in stock, which is why the name matters and why the timing does. If it is for Christmas, the Christmas ordering dates are worth reading before you leave it.

Written by Craig Fearn, Stable & Hoof.