Time to invest in a travel poster

Vintage travel posters are among the most highly sought-after collectibles just now. At Christies of London this week, Zermatt – an Art Deco lithograph by the Swiss graphic artist Eric de Coulon, depicting a train snaking through the Alps in strong shades of red, blue and white – sold for £17,500 (€20k), climbing high above its estimate of £6,000 to £8,000. Closer to home, a Great Southern Railways poster emblazoned with the legend "The Land of Eternal Youth" sold at Whyte's last September for €2,000 (€400 to €600) while a Paul Henry poster of Connemara, published by Bord Fáilte in the 1960s, made €1,200 (€300 to €500).

But posters don't have to be vintage to make attractive wall art. The award-winning Kilkenny illustrator Roger O'Reilly, who has worked on storyboards for Coca-Cola and Diageo as well as the TV series Vikings, is bringing his striking retro-style posters to next week's Gifted Contemporary Craft and Design Fair at the RDS.

They depict many of Ireland's 90 coastal lighthouses, from Tory Island to Tarbert, Haulbowline to Hook Head. "It started off as a project for myself when I drew posters of my home town Drogheda and my adopted city Kilkenny as gifts for friends," says O'Reilly. Travel posters, he adds, bring an extra dimension to any home in that they represent a personal connection. "They may illustrate somewhere you have been or they simply serve to say 'this is where I come from'."