Ripolin is a brand of paint. It was the first commercially available brand of

enamel paint Enamel paint is paint that air-dries to a hard, usually glossy, finish, used for coating surfaces that are outdoors or otherwise subject to hard wear or variations in temperature; it should not be confused with decorated objects in "painted enam ...

. Ripolin, a brand of commercial ready-mixed paints formulated for architectural, marine and other applications, originated in the Netherlands where it was developed by the chemist Carl Julius Ferdinand Riep. In 1897, the Briegleb paint company, as it was then known, formed a partnership with the French firm Lefranc, a manufacturer of artists’ materials. The merged company was named Ripolin, in honor of Riep, and a Ripolin factory was established in France. Ripolin paints became sufficiently renowned during the period that “ripolin” became synonymous with enamel paints in general and entered the French dictionary as early as 1907. Today Ripolin is the property of

PPG Industries PPG Industries, Inc. is an American Fortune 500, ''Fortune'' 500 company and global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials. With headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, PPG operates in more than 70 countries around the globe. By ...

Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

both used Ripolin in their works. The latter's argument against ornamentation and the promotion of the use of white enamel ripolin was famously documented in his ''Law of Ripolin''. In this, he imagined covering the world in the paint: "Imagine the results of the Law of Ripolin. Every citizen is required to replace his hangings, his damasks, his wall-papers, his stencils, with a plain coat of white ripolin. His home is made clean. There are no more dirty, dark corners. Everything is shown as it is."

References

{{PPG Industries Paint manufacturers