How a London Designer Took a Cue From the Underground's Upholstery

Anyone who has ridden public transportation would probably concur: the seat cushions, in general, are not things of beauty. But pare the prints down to their most basic elements, divorce them from their function of protecting commuters’ weary rumps, and you might just be left with a thoroughly lovely pattern for three-dimensional wall tiles.

That is, in part, what London-based designer Lindsay Lang proves with her latest tile collection, for which she plumbed Transport for London’s vast design archive and came up with two sources of inspiration, both dating from 1938: textile designer Edith Marx’s Chevron-print upholstery, and architectural designer Harold Stabler’s Underground station tiles. Though Lang’s tiles are unmistakably domestic, she nods to their grittier origins by crafting them out of cement, the material used in transit stations throughout London.