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O’Shea and Shea gifts honor Ó Séaghdha, the family of Iveragh in County Kerry and the Shee merchants of Kilkenny, on tartan blankets, mugs and Christmas ornaments, plus a garden flag, pennant and harp T-shirt.
O’Shea and Shea are two English spellings of the Irish Ó Séaghdha, from Séaghdha, a personal name glossed as stately, majestic and courteous, and also as learned. The family belonged to Corca Dhuibhne in West Kerry, and until about the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion they were lords of Uí Rathach, the rugged Iveragh peninsula that is still O’Shea country today.
Around the start of the fifteenth century a branch moved east to Kilkenny city, where, usually written Shee, they grew wealthy as merchants; Sir Richard Shee built the Shee Alms House there in 1582 to shelter twelve poor people. A smaller Ó Séaghdha line lived in Tirawley, County Mayo. In more recent times, Katharine O’Shea stood at the center of the Parnell crisis of 1890–91, and Dublin-born Milo O’Shea won lasting fame as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film of Ulysses.
The range carries both spellings. Woven blankets, accent mugs, and ceramic and framed Christmas ornaments are set on the Irish National Tartan, with a Shea throw blanket for cooler evenings. For O’Shea there is also a garden flag, a wall pennant for the den and an Irish harp T-shirt. Discover more in our O’Shea surname history.
