Vintage view: 1960s Danish Vola tap design is still a turn-on
It’s full creative flow — design without boundaries. Pipe ends bristling with heavy industry. Pull out commercial hoses and spray heads that holster up to the ceiling in a pleasing ‘clunk’ are commonplace for even the mid-range dream kitchen.
Looking around any kitchen or bathroom showroom today, it’s clear that the 1970s work of Vola is the most imitated tap design of all time.
In 1968, the first fully integrated, single lever mixer tap was presented to the World, and it had a legendary name attached to its inception — Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971). Vola A/S (est 1873) was and is a brassware manufacturer owned by the Overgaard family in Denmark.
Moved by startling changes in industrial design in the 1960s, owner Verner Overgaard developed a passionate interest in modernism and the open celebration of function.
He had a brief for someone to create a mixer tap where only the spout and handles were visible protruding from a tiled wall rather than sitting up on a counter weighted down by a bulbous old fashioned mixer typical in a post war tap. Jacobsen was Denmark’s leading architect and known for his principles of total design.
When he created a building he took an exacting role in the fixtures, fittings and furnishings, and his astonishing work on the National Bank of Copenhagen (1961) brought him to Overgaard’s attention.
Jacobsen and Verner Overgaard finessed the standard arrangement of two stemmed handles down to a brass barrel finished in chrome supporting a softly angular single spout and one perfectly geared pert lever.
Jacobsen only lived another three years after the designs release, but his range of taps was to change little in 47 years. The new Vola products became celebrated classics making the company’s fortunes. There was a move to stainless steel, rubber seals were replaced in 1989 with ceramic disc technology, and of course today you can go now go hands-free with infrared operation.
The Vola 111 (KV1) intended for counter mounting in the kitchen is elegant in proportion, cubist, cool and arty. Lending it even more kudos, it was from the start — screamingly expensive. Even today, a modest polished chrome kitchen model (KV1) comes in at an eye watering €975. If a tap could ever be called an object of desire — this was it.
The first washroom prototypes were quietly introduced at a commercial level in the National Bank of Denmark in a putty grey, but went into production in chrome soon after.
In a searing colour Volas may appear rather Studio 54, but they brought even conservative architects to their knees in the ’70s. Grey and orange were the original colours to wow the US, UK and Japanese markets in wall and sink mounted mixers.
Today there are 18 colours, and Vola remains one of the few makers brave enough to offer a coloured tap. Verner Overgaard was fondest of the bright orange which still sits well in a monochrome or white sparely styled house.
In 1969, the Vola taps won the company and Jacobsen the coveted ID Prisen and by 1974, the KV1 was curated to the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Jacobsen’s association with Vola continued after his death when in 1971 one of his former assistants, Teit Weylandt, became artistic director, a position he still holds today.
The company recently opened their Vola Academy to ensure plumbers were completely informed when installing their products.
One of Weylandt’s many designs building on the futuristic lines offered by Jacobsen, is the 050 Vola, a spectacular rake like built-in shower head that the master would surely have approved for its minimalist beauty.
If you want an icon attached to your build or renovation, say ‘Vola taps please’ to your architect and watch for that shiver of pleasure.
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