Valerian Grass was born in Omsk and grew up on the move: a few years in Kazakhstan, then Germany from 1990. The family travelled light, but there was always drawing paper, paint and plasticine on the table. “I always loved to paint,” he told Forbes.
A friend from Snina invited him to Slovakia. He was already selling his own pictures on eBay, it seemed a good place to stay, and he met Dana there. In 2007 the two of them began making decorative paintings and selling them online. When the orders outgrew two pairs of hands, other painters joined.
Then came 2008. The crisis, the currency markets and cheap competition from China emptied the order book, and the couple changed course: instead of selling paintings, they would sell what paintings are made of. They started with canvases, stretched in their own workshop. They still stretch them today.
From there the shop grew into everything an artist needs, more than 20,000 products from about 40 brands, and into fifteen more countries, each with a shop in its own language. The wall art never left either: since 2011 it has carried the name Papilora, printed and painted in the company's own atelier. And because this is still a family company from Snina, its newest part builds homes here.