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- Our Offering
Shaver-Ramsey offers high quality and high value rugs to our clients, these coming from some of the best known weaving groups & producers leading the rug renaissance in the last 10-15 years. With such rugs as AZERI, Mahindra, Megerian, Rubia, Euphrates, gabbehs, Ariana, Revival and many other types are represented in our collections, many exclusively at Shaver-Ramsey in the Rocky Mountain region. We represent these lines as well as many other fine lines, many initially contacted though our frequenting the Atlanta rug market. We have an extraordinary collection of kilims and flat-weaves, usually numbering between 800 and one thousand, of old, antique, and contemporary rugs of this type.
While Shaver-Ramsey was founded as an import/retail business, our business over the years has grown through doing business with importers in this country. While we still maintain good contacts overseas and travel there frequently in order to maintain a level of uniqueness of our inventory, our standard operating procedure is to fully utilize importers in maintaining our inventories.
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- Paul Ramsey,Founder
Paul Ramsey has been in the Oriental rug business for over twenty-five years. During that period he has traveled extensively in rug producing countries, namely Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, for the purpose of documenting rug production as well as trading in oriental rugs.
Widely known as a specialist in the oriental rugs and weavings of Turkey, Iran, the Caucasus and Afghanistan, he has a particular specialty in kilims and other tribal rugs of these areas, as well as those of central Asia.
He has served as President of the Rocky Mountain Textile Society from 1983-87, as a member of Board of Directors of the Asian Art Association at the Denver Art Museum from 1984 to 1988, acting as President for two years. He is one of the founders of the American Conference on Oriental Rugs (ACOR), and served as the President of the Board of Directors of ACOR from 1994-97. He has served as a consultant to the Denver Art Museum and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. He served as co-curator of the exhibition, "Prayer Rugs of the Caucasus" held at the Denver Art Museum from May through July 1998.
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- Yearly Courses
We offer a yearly course, ‘The Magic Carpet Ride,' to our clientele and others interested in learning more about rugs. See this years syllabus. We have offered this course annually for over twenty years. It features structural analysis, history and ethnography of rug weaving areas, extensive slides and videos of weavers (all taken by Paul Ramsey in situations over the past 25 years), and extensive time devoted to looking at and discussing rugs of various qualities. We have also given this course at the Denver Art Museum.
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- Informational Programs
Other individual programs on specific kinds of rugs, generally about older rugs but also on new rug productions. Programs of this nature have included such topics as Turkoman rugs, Turkish rugs, and kilims. In 1988 and 2000 we have had two day demonstrations by village weavers from Turkey.
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- Films
We show a number of films each year, mostly relative to the cultures of rug areas. A series on contemporary Iranian films was avidly received locally. A perennial favorite is Gabbeh, which again highlights the role of rugs in Iranian culture. Other favorites are Grass and People of the Wind, both films about nomadic migrations in Iran.
Click here for a video tour of our gallery.
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- Lectures & Talks
We give many talks, lectures, discussions to various civic groups, such as The Denver Art Museum, Newcomers International, the Denver and Boulder Weaving Guilds, the Eclectics, antique guilds, etc.
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- Institutional Ties: We have worked with museums and universities in promoting the art of rugs and related textiles, namely:
1983 - A Tribal Rug show at the University of Denver's Art Department, showing rugs and textiles of various tribal groups, complete with a Central Asian (Khirgiz) yurt (nomadic tent).
1991 - A Middle Eastern rug & textile show at the Student Center at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Sponsored by the Art Department there, this also featured a lecture by Paul Ramsey on the subject. Previously, Paul have given workshops in the Weaving Department.
1994 - A major exhibition at the Nicholaiason Museum in Casper, Wyoming. Complete with yurt, this exhibition was focused on the variety of oriental rugs, and highlighted the three basic economic traditions rug weaving - namely, village, tribal, and workshop traditions. This also served as a fund-raiser for the museum.
1997-98 - Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Our Khirgiz yurt from Afghanistan on loan for an exhibition there.
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