Gifts for grandparents that outlast the occasion. A maker's guide.

In brief: the best personalised gifts for grandparents are things they will use. A chopping board from the grandchildren works if they cook. Grandparents' Day in the UK is the first Sunday of October, 4 October in 2026.

I make chopping boards for a living, so treat me as interested. I have also spent enough time reading the gift notes that travel with them to know which ones land.

When is Grandparents' Day in the UK?

Grandparents' Day in the UK is the first Sunday in October. In 2026 that is Sunday 4 October. The day was introduced here in 1990 by Age Concern, and has been marked on the first Sunday in October since 2008.

It is a quieter occasion than Mother's Day or Father's Day, and most families do not plan around it. The American date is different again: the first Sunday after Labor Day, which in 2026 is 13 September. If you are reading a date online, check which country it came from.

First Sunday of October, and no one will mind if the gift arrives at Christmas instead. In my order book, December is far busier than October.

Is a chopping board a good gift for grandparents?

A board is a good gift for the same unglamorous reasons a good pan is. It gets used most weeks, it stays in the kitchen for decades, and it can be brought back to life long after it stops looking new.

Here is the part that costs me sales. If they do not cook, do not buy them a board. A chopping board is not an ornament, and a nice one sitting unused in a cupboard is a waste of both your money and a good piece of timber. A serving board is the exception, because a family that eats together will use one whether or not anybody cooks from scratch.

That also answers the question I am asked most often at this time of year, which is what to buy the grandparents who have everything. They probably do have every kitchen object they need. What they cannot buy for themselves is their grandchildren's names on something they pick up on a Tuesday evening without thinking about it.

If you want to know why a board made one at a time costs what it does, I have written about that separately in why a handmade chopping board costs more. It is not a sales pitch, and it includes the cases where a less expensive board is the sensible choice.

One thing worth knowing before you choose: construction changes how a board behaves and what it weighs. An end-grain board, built from the cut ends of the timber, is the heavier and more substantial of the two, and I have set out how that construction works if you want the detail. Think about the person who will use it and whether they can comfortably lift and wash it; I come back to that below.

What can the grandchildren give their grandparents?

The board I point families towards first is The Fulford, at £39.95 for the small size. It is the smallest work that leaves the same bench as everything else I make: the same timber, the same glue-up, the same food-safe oil and wax. A larger 31 by 25 cm version is £54.95 if several grandchildren want to go in together, which is what usually happens.

It comes in European beech or English ash, and beech is the one I would choose here. It is pale and close-grained, so a burn reads clearly against it. There is more on how each timber behaves on the beech page, and more on engraving itself further down.

Engraving adds £10 and no extra time, which matters when a nine-year-old has decided on a Thursday that this is the present.

A first board from the grandchildren is small, real and theirs. It is a way into the workshop rather than a lesser version of it.

What should you engrave for a grandparent?

Names travel better than anything else. A grandchild's name, or three of them in a row, still makes sense in twenty years. Ages do not: a board that says "5 and 7" is out of date by the following birthday, and a board that names a person is not.

After names, the things that last are the ones tied to the kitchen rather than to the year. The room itself works well, so does the meal a family always eats at that table, and so does the surname with the year the family started. For new grandparents, the year they became grandparents reads nicely on the edge, and it will still read nicely when the child is grown.

Five starting points I would put on a working board are “Sunday at Nan’s”, “Grandad’s kitchen”, “The Wilson family table”, “Nanna / Isla & Leo”, and “Grandma since 2026” for someone new to the role. Swap in your own names and year. The slash marks a line break, and each example fits the standard two-line limit.

What dates badly is easy to list. Long messages, because the lettering has to shrink to fit. Jokes, because a joke has a shelf life and a board does not. Anything phrased like a greetings card, because in five years it reads like one. My own test is whether the words would still make sense to somebody who was not in the room when you chose them.

There is a practical limit that helps more than it hurts. A standard order takes two lines of up to thirty characters each. That is enough for a nan, a gran or a grandpa to be named properly and not enough for a paragraph, which is usually the right constraint for something that has to live on a working surface for thirty years.

Placement matters as much as the words: on a board that will actually be used, the lettering belongs on the border, an edge or the underside, where the knife is not. I have written the full account of where words survive and which woods burn boldest in the maker's guide to personalised chopping boards, so I will not repeat it here.

What do you give new grandparents?

This is a different present from the one the grandchildren give, and it is the one I would spend the most thought on. A board engraved with the new baby's name and date of birth, given to the people who have just become grandparents, is an heirloom that starts on day one rather than one that has to be inherited.

It is also a gift that ages in the right direction. The baby's name is on a surface that will be in daily use for the whole of that child's childhood, which is a rare thing among new-baby presents. Most things bought for a new arrival are outgrown inside two years.

I would keep the wording to the name and the date and leave the rest out. Birth weights and hospital details belong on a card. A name and a year on the edge of a board reads as a record rather than an announcement, and it is still the right wording at a twenty-first birthday.

On timing, be careful of one distinction. A board that is in stock keeps its normal dispatch time even when it is engraved. A board that is made to order does not, and its product page says so with the lead time before you buy.

What about great-grandparents, and the board they already own?

Some great-grandparents will happily use a heavy end-grain block. If lifting a board to the sink has become awkward, I would choose something lighter that still gives them enough room to work. Ask what they cook and how they wash up before deciding. The more expensive block is no kindness if it sits unused because moving it is a nuisance.

The other question I get from families is what to do about the board that is already in the kitchen: the one that has been there since before anybody can remember, scored and grey and slightly hollow in the middle. Very often it does not need replacing.

The Refresh Service restores boards, and it takes boards I did not make as well as ones I did. Prices start at £45 for boards up to 30 cm, £65 from 30 to 50 cm and £90 above that, with end-grain blocks quoted individually. You send three or four photographs from your phone, I look at them and give you one fixed price for that board before you commit to anything, and UK return postage is inside the price. The assessment is free.

The board comes back flattened, resurfaced, re-edged, cleaned and re-finished. For a great-grandparent in particular, giving back the board they have used for forty years, working properly again, tends to mean more than a new one.

How do you order it, and when?

The order itself is short. Choose a board from the personalised collection, type the words on the product page, and check them in the live preview. What you approve is what I burn. A handwritten note can go in the parcel, and there is never a price in the box.

For timing, use the rule rather than a date. Boards that are in stock leave the workshop within a working day, engraved or not. Boards that are made to order take up to three weeks, so count back three weeks from the day you need it; if that date has already passed, choose a board that is in stock. For Christmas, order earlier than you think you need to; December is the busiest month here by a distance.

One practical note for a gift going straight to a grandparent's house. The handwritten note is where the message from the grandchildren goes, so there is no need to spend the engraving on it. Put the names on the board and the sentiment in the note, and the board still makes sense in ten years when the note has been put away in a drawer.

So what would I give?

The reversal in this whole piece is that the gift flows both ways. The grandchildren give the board, with their names on the edge, and years later somebody hands it back across the same kitchen with the names still there and the surface worn smooth from use. That is the part a gadget cannot do. If you want a starting point rather than a browse, the boards set up for engraving are the place to begin.

— Ewald