+ By Desiree Smith-Daughety + Photos by Vi Baudean
Elizabeth Ramirez has ideas—and a long history of having them. These aren’t ideas that are uttered into the ether, only to evaporate from good intention. If Ramirez isn’t executing them herself, then she’s making the pitch to those who can.
Ramirez is the owner of Wimsey Cove Framing & Fine Art Printing, an Annapolis-based business that has evolved through relocations, changing economies, and consumer needs. In the process, it has become a hub for both artists and Ramirez’s leadership activities within the Annapolis arts scene.
An artist herself, Ramirez uses mediums including watercolor and oils. She had focused on landscape paintings but is now exploring abstracts, maybe influenced by the design services she provides as a busy framing shop owner. Originally from Arlington, Virginia, she attended Rivier University in Nashua, New Hampshire. “I have a starving artist’s degree,” she says, “a bachelor of arts in studio art. What do you do with that?”
What she did was get a job, in 1992, at LeeWard’s Creative Crafts, where she served as the art department manager. When Michael’s bought the company in 1994, she worked for it for 10 years and relocated to Annapolis in 1999. Moving up the corporate ladder, Ramirez became the frame shop manager first for the Bowie store and then for the Annapolis store. She has never looked back. As Michael’s stores opened across Maryland, Ramirez traveled around, teaching framing to staff. “I love to teach!” she exclaims. But traveling and putting in long hours took a toll and brought up an idea for an exit strategy.
“Big-box stores are hard,” she says. “I was working like it was my own business. So I decided to open a framing shop on the side.” Ramirez’s mother hails from Annapolis, and her grandmother had a home in West Annapolis. In 2001, Ramirez’s idea to start a side business in framing resulted in the opening of her first “shop” on her grandmother’s front porch. Her mother asked what she was going to name it. Her grandfather, a naval history instructor at the US Naval Academy, had found the name Wimsey on an old map of Weems Creek. He had decided to name the cove on Weems Creek where their house was Wimsey Cove and had often said that their house was just a “Whimsey on the Wimsey.” Thus Wimsey Cove became the name.
Ramirez’s mother had a friend who printed high-quality historic city maps and bird’s-eye views. Ramirez began selling those and then printing others at her store. She and her mother started selling them at the West Annapolis Oktoberfest and then at street festivals and craft fairs around Maryland. They eventually expanded to about 30 events and shows each year. Ramirez had the idea of including a coupon for framing with each sale. The maps were a hit, and she continued selling them for the next 20 years.
Her daughter, Isabella, was born in 2005, and Ramirez no longer wanted to travel around Maryland, so she left Michael’s and took the entrepreneur’s leap of faith into the full-time framing business. She opened an 800-square-foot store in Edgewater and carved out a play area, called Bella’s Corner, so her daughter could be with her at work. Her business afforded her the opportunity to later homeschool her daughter through middle school. “Without employees, I couldn’t have done it,” she says. “And wouldn’t want to. I love having employees.”
When she added art printing to her roster of business services, it took off, requiring the need for a bigger shop. On a mother-daughter excursion in 2007, Ramirez spied for lease a onetime storage space with lots of windows and no walls on Chinquapin Round Road. But she had ideas for what it could become and soon had a functioning space to serve customers.
According to Ramirez, the art of custom framing is her creative passion, and every framing project is different. Building relationships is important to Ramirez. “I love talking with customers,” she says. “I get to hear stories behind the art pieces I’m designing.” A customer once remarked that she thought that Elizabeth and her staff all knew her life story, which underscores a sign in the store that reads, “Enter as strangers, leave as friends.”
Her design philosophy is that customers shouldn’t automatically revert to black framing. “I love color,” she says, and emphasizes care and attention in guiding her customers’ selections. “If you come to a custom frame shop, have it look customized,” she advises.
The process of design involves careful selection of the right matting, framing, and overall presentation, and drilling down to those details that a customer may not consider, such as where the piece is going in the home, the color of the wall, and the furniture style. Ramirez deliberately hires artists for their ability to picture such descriptions of environment and who aren’t shy about pointing out potential color clashes. Ramirez might gently state that an option a customer is leaning toward is something she wouldn’t hang in her house before guiding them to achieve a finished piece that complements both art and home.
Ramirez counts many artists as longtime friends, having met them over the years through the framing, scanning, and printing services and the art supplies selection that her store offers, and through area organizations that she has served. She was president of the Annapolis Arts Alliance for more than a decade, and at one point she was on about eight different boards. She also founded and organized the Alliance’s Gallery 57 West, which stemmed from an idea she had for a pop-up shop for artists to help promote the organization.
She started showcasing her artist friends’ work at her Edgewater location in 2007 and continues the tradition in her present location in the Design District. Ramirez has an area that spotlights original works by area artists each month, and she works with the artists to ensure that they will have nice frames in which to show their works. “I just want artists to shine,” she says. “Presentation is everything. It’s very important to me, from the framing to the packaging.”
