Moquette is a tough woollen fabric used for upholstery on public transportation all over the world and is derived from the French word for carpet. The material typically comprises 85% wool and 15% nylon and is created using the weaving method known as jacquard. The woollen pile has excellent thermal characteristics, keeping you warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The seats of London Underground’s Tube trains, particularly, are renowned for having Moquette upholstery. There were about ten moquette manufacturers in the UK during the decades of the numerous railway companies. The number of passengers drastically decreased as a result of the nationalisation of the railways after World War II, and the Beeching cuts in the early 1960s. There were two suppliers by the middle of the 1960s, with Courtaulds being one of them. The other company is based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and sells fabrics.
Sources
Moquette project | London Transport Museum. (n.d.). London Transport Museum. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/projects/moquette-project
Moquette – Wikipedia. (n.d.). Moquette – Wikipedia. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moquette
Design books – Amazon
* This website may contain affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission when you click on links at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon and Sovrn affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
-
Designing Liners: A History of Interior Design Afloat -
French Art Deco by Jared Goss -
The Art of Critical Making -
The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s -
The Architecture of Health Hospital Design -
Swedish Design: An Ethnography -
The Thoughtless Design of Everyday Things -
Mid-Century Modern Design: A Complete Sourcebook -
How Design Makes the World
More Design Terms
-
Dada Art Movement – Making Mischief
As a designer, I am passionate about the history of art and their influence on ‘visual design.’ In art history, Dada is the artistic movement that preceded Surrealism, it began in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916 by a group of mostly painters and painters. Dada artworks challenged the preconceived notions of what art meant. Many Dadaists felt…
-
Dovetail – design term
Dovetail is the name for a shape that looks like a dove’s tail and is used in woodworking. Joints are made up of tabs in the shape of a dovetail that fit into holes in the other part. Dovetails are often used to join the corners of cabinet drawers and box shapes.Read More →
-
Cassone – the marriage chest
A cassone is a big decorated chest that was made in Italy between the 14th and 16th centuries. In 1472, a Florentine merchant married a young noblewoman named Vaggia Nerli. Cassoni were put on display in the most important and well-furnished room in the palace.Read More →
-
Capitalisation rules – the basics
If you have ever read an old newspaper (early nineteenth century) and you look carefully at the old broadsheets. You will notice that words are capitalised here and there and that the rules of capitalisation, some of which you will learn shortly, seem nonexistent.Read More →
-
Dutch Design – what is it?
The phrase “Dutch Design” refers to an informal artistic school of design in the Netherlands, particularly in product design. More specifically, the word refers to the design aesthetic used by Dutch designers. Read More →
-
Ottoman simplicity of sitting
A low seat with a cushion that became popular in the late 1700s. They simplified sitting. READ MORERead More →
-
Agitprop – Design and Art Term
Agitprop art (or the art of agitation) was used to manipulate ideological beliefs, specifically to spread the ideals of Communism in Russia in the period immediately following the 1917 revolution. The term ‘agitprop’ (an abbreviation for agitation propaganda: ‘agitational propaganda’) was first used shortly after the Revolution, and the Communist Party established the Department of…
-
Maiolica tin-glazed earthenware, a product of the Renaissance
Maiolica is a tin-glazed earthenware that was produced during the Renaissance in Italy. The name comes from Majorca, the island from which, in the 15th century, a lot of Hispano-Moresque tin-glazed pottery was brought into Italy. The technique of covering with a tin glaze earthenware was similar to that used elsewhere in Europe for delftware…
-
Basse-taille – Design Term
Basse-taille is a method for enamelling the graves or low-reliefs on a metal surface, typicallyRead More →
-
Mission Furniture – Design Dictionary Term
The term mission furniture was first popularized by Joseph P. McHugh of New York, a furniture manufacturer and retailer. The word mission references the Spanish missions throughout colonial California. The style became increasingly popular following the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.Read More →
-
Moquette – fabric for public transport
Moquette is a tough woollen fabric used for upholstery on public transportation all over the world. The fabric is typically composed of 85% wool and 15% nylon and is created using the weaving method known as jacquard. It has excellent thermal characteristics, keeping you warm in the winter and cool in the summer.Read More →
-
Typography Glossary – Design Terms
It helps to have an appropriate language to talk about typography. The following is a glossary of some of the words and their definitions that are used to described typography.Read More →
-
Shagreen – Design Term
Shagreen is fish skin used as a veneer to cover furniture and accessories. Also knownRead More →
-
What is Wrought Iron?
The term “wrought iron” refers to the material rather than the products made of iron. Modern mild steel has supplanted wrought iron, a forgeable ferrous material used up until about the middle of the twentieth century. Because of the extensive forming required during its production—under power hammers and through rollers—it was originally referred to as…
-
Guilloche two banded decorative motif
The guilloche is a decorative element that encircles a line of bosses with two bands or ribbons intertwined. In the British Regency style, it was particularly well-liked and adopted by furniture designers from Renaissance to the Twenties and Fifties.Read More →
-
Brandewijnskom – brandy bowls for birth ceremonies
Brandewijnskom. Brandy bowls were made in Holland and Friesland in the 17th and 18th centuries.Read More →
-
Affichiste French for Poster Designer
Affichiste. Name (literally ‘poster designer’) taken by the French artists and photographers Raymond Hains (1926-) and Jacques de la Villeglé (1926-), who met in 1949 and created a technique to create collages from pieces of torn-down posters during the early 1950s. These works, which they displayed for the first time in 1957, were called affiches…
-
Minimalism – Less is More
Minimalism is an art historical and critical term. The purest forms of minimalism include cubes and spheres, plain, unadorned surfaces, and solid colours. Adolf Loos’ famous quote, “Ornament is a Crime,” has become catchphrases for the minimalist design movement.Read More →
-
‘Moderne’ Style of Art Deco Popular in the 20s & 30s
Moderne was a decorative style that was mostly about how things looked on the outside. Moderne architecture was most noticeable in public buildings like skyscrapers and movie theatres. Postmodernism later brought back a lot of the styles that were part of the moderne movement.Read More →
-
Slipware Pottery – what is it?
Slipware is pottery known by its primary decorating method in which slip is added before firing by dipping, painting or splashing on the leather-hard clay body surface. Slip is an aqueous clay body suspension that is a combination of clays and other minerals, such as quartz, feldspar, and mica.Read More →
-
Achilles Shield – Dictionary of Silverware
A silver-gilt convex shield with a sizable central medallion depicting the shield of encrusted iron made by the god Hephaestus for Achilles at Troy, as it is described by Homer in Book 18 of the Iliad. The medallion, which depicts in high relief a figure of the Sun (Apollo) standing in a quadriga (a chariot…
-
Academic Style – Dictionary of Silverware
A style of decoration, developed in the United States, based on the copying of earlier English and French styles. The style was in the tradition of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, the designs being precise and academic. It was introduced to flatware in the 1880s, initiated at the Gorham Company and occurs in hollow ware…
-
Ablution basin – 📖 Dictionary of Silverware
Ablution basin. A type of basin for holding water intended: (1) in ecclesiastical usage, for rinsing the hands or some object of church plate, such as a chalice; or (2) in secular usage, for rinsing the fingers at the dinner table (sometimes called a rose-water basin). Its founder donated two ecclesiastical ablution basins in 1515-16…
-
Anatomy of a Hallmark 🤔
A hallmark is a symbol or device struck at an assay office on gold or silver, indicating that article conforms to legal standards of manufacture established by the monarch, local guilds, government etc. Literally, mark applied at Goldsmith’s Hall (London assay office since 1300) but extended to cover e.g. all five stamps found on Victorian…
-
Pedestal Table inspired by 🏛️ classical architecture
A pedestable table is originally the base support of a column, in classical architecture. A pedestal in furniture may have one of four definitions: Read More →
-
Lithography (Design Term)
A method of printing from a design drawn directly on a slab of stone or other suitable material. The design is not raised in relief as in woodcut or incised as in line engraving, but drawn on a smooth printing surface. Initially, this surface was provided with a slab of unique limestone, but metal (usually…
-
The Symbolism of flowers
For millennia, and among almost every culture, flowers and trees have been adopted as symbols, type and emblems of human groups and affiliations. The “War of the Roses” the red and white roses which were the badges of Lancastrian and York rivals to the English throne.Read More →
-
Functionalism a design and architectural principle
With his motto ‘form follows function,’ American architect Louis Sullivan is considered the founder of 20th-century Functionalism. Functionalism became a label for an extremely wide variety of avant-garde architecture and design in the first half of the 20th century, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s classical Rationalism, Erich Mendelsohn’s Expressionism, Giuseppe Terragni’s unadorned, heroic structures,…
-
Rya – Finnish Weaving Process
Eva Brummer set up a studio in Helsinki in 1929 to revive the technique, which involves cutting the pile unevenly in order to create a thick relief effect. As rugs, the weavings became popular in the 1950s and were closely identified with the exuberant Scandinavian Modern style.Read More →
-
Ceramics a gift from the ancients
Ceramics are objects made of moistened clay, shaped and then baked. All ceramics are Earthenware, terracotta, brick, tile, faience, majolica, stoneware, and porcelain. Ceramicware is decorated with clay inlays, relief patterns on the surface, or incised, stamped or embossed designs. Read More →
-
Fibreglass exciting early design medium
Known as glass-enhanced plastic (GRP) in Britain, fibre-enhanced plastic (FRP) in the USA or by the trade name fibreglass (after the manufacturer Fibreglass Ltd.), GRP has been used for a wide range of applications from car body panels and boat hulls to furniture and tennis rackets. Read More →
-
What is the Pantone Colour Matching System?
The Pantone Colour Matching System is a system for identifying, matching and communicating colours across product design, graphic design and marketing. It utilises a unique numbering system for identifying its colours.Read More →
-
Gestalt – design from chaos to order
As a visual designer, I am fascinated how people process visual perceptual information. The designRead More →
-
Standardization of Design – Design Ideas
Standardization is a critical feature of designs designed for industrial mass production. It allows componentsRead More →
-
Netsuke – Small Mythological carvings from Japan
Netsuke: A little Japanese sculptured item of ivory, wood, or porcelain that ranges in height and width from one-half to three inches. Mythological images, flowers, animals, gods, and goddesses are among the carvings. Netsuke pieces were initially employed as toggles in the fourteenth century. A cord was slipped under and over the obi and through a…
-
What is a Monogram?
A monogram is a single symbol made up of one or more letters. Every aspect of an individual’s taste and fancy can be accommodated with a monogram. Monograms differ significantly, and there are of a great variety of design. There are so many different types and combinations of the same letters that no two persons…
-
Exploring fractals and design
Fractals are intricate geometric structures created when patterns (or pieces of patterns) are altered and duplicated at ever-diminishing scales. Besides having a tremendously important effect across a range of sciences, fractals make a stunning picture on your tablet. Even simple shapes can quickly grow complicated when they are altered again and again. A close look…
-
Rattan – a natural design material
Rattan is a type of climbing or trailing vine-like palm native to southern Asia, Malaysia and China. Its outer bark is used for caning, and its inner, reedlike section is used to weave wicker furniture. It was introduced to the West in the early 19th century, rattan has become the standard material for caning, and…
-
Acroter – a pedestal for a statue
Acroter is a plinth or pedestal for a statue or other ornament, placed at the apex or lower corners of a pediment. Read More →
-
Bracket Foot – What is it?
Bracket foot. In furniture, a right-angled foot, with each Inner and Curt. Bracket feet may be straight or ogee (a double curve also known as a cyma curve, typical in Chippendale Designs) or French ( a flared foot standard in the furniture of Hepplewhite and his successors).Read More →
-
Garniture – Decorative set of Porcelain
Usually on a fireplace mantel. Garnitures were put on furniture and ledges or niches around a room’s walls, notably over doors or fireplaces.Read More →
-
The Origins of Punk
The realities of dissatisfied working-class urban teenagers with little hope of a job, housing, or a meaningful future shaped Punk in the mid-1970s. Read More →
-
Taylorism Search for Industrial Efficiency or Robotism?
His 1911 book Principles of Scientific Management outlined these concepts, and they have influenced various aspects of design, including labour-saving kitchens and more ergonomic household equipment. These included the writings of fellow American Christine Frederick, who published Scientific Management in the Home in 1915, and Lillian Gilbreth’s assessments of domestic efficiency for the Brooklyn Gas…
-
Adhocism – an idea of improvisation
‘Adhocism’ ideas were coined in their book Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation by architect, theoretician, former Designer Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver (1972). Read More →
-
Vorticism British Art Movement – 1914 – 1918
Vorticist painting merged cubist reality fragmentation with hard-edged imagery taken from machines and urban environments. It was essentially a British version of futurism, albeit with ideological distinctions. Lewis was a staunch opponent of the futurists. Lawrence Atkinson, Jessica Dismorr, Cuthbert Hamilton, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Edward Wadsworth, and the sculptors’ Sir Jacob Epstein and Henri…
-
Sgraffito – Design Term
Sgraffito is a scratched pottery decoration, first used in China, which spread across Europe via Persia. The vessel is immersed in slip, and then the decoration is scratched on the surface to reveal the darker body below. It was often used with maiolica from Italy.Read More →
-
“Just in time” design concept
Just in time” design concept, this practice became an increasingly important aspect of economic manufacturing and distribution. The ability to link sales data from retail outlets and checkout terminals with centralised corporate manufacturing and distribution systems ‘just in time’ eliminated the need for manufacturer-retailers like Benetton, an Italian clothing company, to keep large amounts of…
-
Linoleum created as an inexpensive floor covering
Frederick Walton invented linoleum in Britain in 1860. Walton coated flax cloth with a combination of gum, cork dust, resin and linseed oil in search of a cheap floor covering. An amalgamation of the Latin Linum (‘flax’) and oleum (‘oil’) formed the word linoleum.Read More →
-
Surrealism – Art & Design Term
Surrealism was one of the most influential and disruptive trends of the twentieth century, flourishing especially in the 1920s and 1930s and offering a radical contrast to Cubism’s rational and formal features. It emphasised the positive rather than the nihilistic, unlike Dada, from which it derived in many aspects. Surrealism aimed to gain access to…
-
Kansei Engineering Applied to Design
A conceptual dimension in web design, development and thinking is called “Kansei engineering” a deeply held philosophy that every web site should be designed and developed to provide strong emotional as well as functional satisfaction to its user.Read More →
-
ISOTYPE – International System of Typographic Picture Education
ISOTYPE was created as a mechanism of communicating statistics using graphic symbols. It was an essential part of Otto Neurath’s (1882–1945) worldwide graphic language, which he created in Vienna following World War I. Originally known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics, ISOTYPE was created to make complex statistical information about housing, health, education, and…
-
Baroque – Art Term
The Catholic Counter-Reformation is closely related with Baroque, which peaked in Rome around 1630–1680. Despite its origins in Rome, the Baroque style influenced people all around Europe. Its rapid pace, striking realism (giving spectators the feeling that they were watching an actual event), and direct emotional appeal were perfectly suited to announcing the Catholic Church’s…
-
Defining Asymmetrical Balance and Determining Its Use in Art and Design
Design principles are the foundation of a good design. The design principles you learned will guide you in creating visual media. An efficient design will guide the viewer to see what you intend for them to look in the way you intended for them to see it.Read More →
-
Exploring fractals and design
Fractals are intricate geometric structures created when patterns (or pieces of patterns) are altered and duplicated at ever-diminishing scales. Besides having a tremendously important effect across a range of sciences, fractals make a stunning picture on your tablet. Even simple shapes can quickly grow complicated when they are altered again and again. A close look…
-
Glasgow School – Art & Design Term
“Glasgow School’ is a term used to describe several groups of artists based in Glasgow. The first and most significant of these groups was a loose association of artists active from around 1880 to the turn of the century; there was no formal membership or programme, but the artists involved (who prefered to be known…
-
Neue Sachlichkeit – Design Term
Neue Sachlichkeit was a term coined in 1923 by Gustav Hartlaub, director of the Kunsthalle, Mannheim, as the title of an exhibition he organised to demonstrate the progress of post-war painting in Germany.Read More →
-
Jugendstil an artistic style
Jugendstil, an artistic style that originated around the mid-1890s in Germany and persisted throughout the first decade of the 20th century. READ MORRead More →
-
Neon Lighting – Dictionary – Design Term
Neon Lighting. Semiflexible, hollow tubes of clear acrylic with small bulbs inside that can be connected to light up all at once or sequentially to produce a “chasing” effect. It’s also known as disco lighting, and it’s given homeowners new illumination alternatives. Lights designers consider neon lighting to be an art form.Read More →
-
Arabesque form of artistic decoration
The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of “surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils” or simple lines, often combined with other elements.Read More →
-
Carrara marble – “Luni marble”
Carrara marble is a white or blue-grey marble that is commonly used in sculpture and building decor. Carrara in the province of Massa and Carrara in the Lunigiana, the northernmost tip of modern-day Tuscany, Italy, is where it is quarried.Read More →
-
Suprematism Russian abstract art & design style
Suprematism was a non-objective style of art developed by Kasimir Malevich in which ‘modern symbols’ such as the rectangle, triangle, and circle replaced the more conventional obsession with the human face and natural objects. Read More →
-
Industrial Design – design for mass production
After 1865, as industrialisation accelerated and consumer products proliferated, producers were forced to concentrate on product appearance. Ordinary people desired comfort, even luxury: patent furniture, opulent home interiors, and eclectic mail-order products. Read More →
-
Swedish Modern – Scandinavian respect for design
In the 1930s, when modern Swedish design was becoming more well-known in Europe and the United States, this term became popular. However, it peaked in the 1950s. It combined many of Modernism’s characteristics with natural materials like wood and Scandinavian respect for artisanship.Read More →
-
Salon des Arts Ménagers (1923) French information provider on domestic management
This institution began as the ‘Salon des Appareils Ménagers’ in the Champ de Mars in Paris in 1923 to provide information to the French on all aspects of domestic management, furnishing, and decoration. The Salon moved to the Grand Palais in 1926, when it was renamed the ‘Salon des Arts Ménagers.’ This first exhibition, which…
-
Surrealism – what was it?
Surrealism was one of the most important and subversive movements of the 20th century flourished, especially in the 1920s and 1930s and provided a radical alternative to cubism’s rational and formal qualities. Unlike Dada, from which it emerged in many ways, it emphasised the positive rather than the nihilistic.Read More →
-
Anthropometrics a systematic study of human measurement
Anthropometrics is a systematic study of human measurement that was increasingly used by designers dealing with design issues involving human movement in the decades following WWII. Their implementation of a more analytical and methodical approach to design problems had a lot in common with the techniques studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm from…
-
ABS was a new breed of plastics
ABS (acrylontrile‐butadiene‐styrene) was one of a slew of modern plastics that appeared in the aftermath of World War II. ABS sheets may be injection moulded, blow moulded, thermoformed, or vacuum-formed to create solid content.Read More →
-
Pâte de Verre – art and design term
Pâte de Verre (French, “glass paste”) is a material produced by grinding glass into a fine powder, adding a binder to create a paste, and adding a fluxing medium to facilitate melting. The paste is brushed or tamped into a mould, dried, and fused by firing. After annealing, the object is removed from the mould…
-
Synthetic cubism – art & design term
Synthetic cubism is the later phase of cubism, generally considered to have run from about 1912 to 1914, characterised by simpler shapes and brighter colours.Read More →
-
Rococo – art | design term
Rococo is a term used in the visual arts to characterise the light, elegant, and sensuous style that emerged in France in the early 18th century reached its apogee in the 1730s and was gradually replaced in the 1760s by the strict, moralising characteristics of Neoclassicism.Read More →
-
What is encyclopedia.design?
Check out my latest landing page.Read More →
-
Branding – Design Term
How names, logos, icons, trademarks or product designs endow products or services with a recognisableRead More →
-
Good Design – form vs. decoration
Although designers, critics, theorists, and historians have offered countless definitions of ‘good design for centuries.Read More →
-
Necker cube and the problem of perception
The Necker cube illustrates how the eye can reach two conclusions. The two squares in the Necker cube can be perceived as either the front or the rear surface of the cube. Read More →
-
Gesamtkunstwerk – Complete Art Work
The Bauhaus school was founded on the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk. Gesamtkunstwerk is an Artistic term;Read More →