Seats of London: A Field Guide to London Transport Moquette Patterns

Moquette is the carpet-like fabric covering the seats we sit on in London’s Tubes, buses, trams and Overground trains - and here is a brilliantly colourful guide to all its patterns.

London Transport has always wanted the best design, be it Charles Holden’s superb art deco Tube stations on the Piccadilly Line, its elegant Johnston typeface or Harry Beck’s Tube map.

And this pursuit of excellence has extended even to the design of the fabrics it covers our bus and Tube seats with: moquette. In the Thirties top artists like Paul Nash and Enid Marx were commissioned to design patterns; nowadays every line like Crossrail or the Overground gets its own unique, colour-co-ordinated moquette pattern.

Now, in conjunction with the London Transport Museum, which has the definitive London Transport moquette archive, Andrew Martin has written a delightful, surprising and covetable guide to all these patterns, from the first horse bus to the latest Tube train.