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Art Lebedev Studio's Valikus Patterned Paint Roller

It's like applying wallpaper, without the wallpaper

By Rain Noe - May 1, 2015

in Object Culture

Leave it up to Art Lebedev Studio to recast something as basic as the paint roller in an entirely new light. Their Valikus roller is made from silicon and embossed with a floral pattern. Behind it sits a second roller, which applies paint to the first roller. (Frankly speaking, I can't work out how that second roller is loaded in the first place.)

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A steady-handed user can then apply a pattern to a wall thusly:

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The tricky part was getting the pattern dense enough to read as a whole, but sparse enough to deal with the eyeballed edge-to-edge alignments. "It has to be both simple and complex at the same time," the team writes. "[The pattern must] align with different [passes] which [are] unavoidable in real life." They experimented with different patterns, which you can see below and read about here.

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I think the real challenge would the limitations of the user's height, and keeping the pressure of the stroke even from high to low. If I tried to continue a stroke upwards by dragging a ladder over, I have no faith I'd be able to line the pattern up again.

In any case, it's a cool concept. Oh wait a sec—not a concept; it's actually in production! The Valikus goes for 33 Euros, or about US $36.

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Angela Stefania Szavui

9 years ago

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I don't know if this has really been around for 100 years, but surely in the communist years (and for some time after) in Romania this patterned paint roller was indeed a very popular tool (I remember my grandmother saying that the best painter in town was the one with the vastest selection of patterns, because nobody wanted the same patterns the neighbor had on the walls). This kind of object could be a nice challenge to improve though, updating component materials, paint application techniques and searching for easy-to-align patterns, but I think Lebedev's version doesn't bring any of that to the table (and there are so many other themes a pattern can be inspired from besides flowers...).

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Mister Joe

9 years ago

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https://youtu.be/bpQ4kfJNkgg?t=6m44s
If you want to see how a non-Lebedev version holds and distributes the paint - see this video @6:40 or so. Maybe Lebedev's version uses the same thing, they just didn't want to show it in their promo photography?

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Mister Joe

9 years ago

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https://youtu.be/bpQ4kfJNkgg
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Mister Joe

9 years ago

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These are really cool, but I have to say, Art Lebedev Studio didn't "recast something as basic as the paint roller in an entirely new light" This exact product has existed for a while. Just google "patterned paint rollers". Clare Bosanquet says here that they have existed in Romania for the last 100 years: http://the-painted-house.co.uk/about/

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