Like Clockwork, Orange

I am an interior designer, born and raised in London who went to Scotland in 1988 to study at Glasgow School of Art. One of the things I first experienced was the subway, known locally as the Clockwork Orange and as a Londoner, I was enchanted by its scale. One line that goes clockwise or anticlockwise and trains that are about 20% smaller than the Metro Cammell ones that were running in London at the time, identical in almost every detail except that passengers’ heads would stick out of the doors when they opened.

When I graduated in 1991 I was offered a graduate post at Tilney Lumsden Shane (TLS) in London. Not long after I started working there they, as part of the Transport Design Consortium, were commissioned to design refits of London Underground rolling stock. One of the things we did was create a design manual so that all future refits and new stock would have a coherent approach. Various concepts were standardised such as the interior paint colour, the use of the tube line colour on grab rails and in rubber flooring to help people subliminally know which line they were on and to build a sense of community and identity around each line. A big part of that was developing an approach to the moquette, coming from the French word for carpet, so that the fabrics would contain abstract clues expressing the character of each line and the areas it served.

This, and our design work on the original Eurostar fit-out, gave the company a reputation such that when SPT wanted to refresh their 70s rolling stock it was TLS they came to. As a junior designer, I was placed on the team of three to work on the design for my beloved Clockwork Orange.

Glasgow Subway Interior, SPT

We applied many of the same principles we had developed for London to the refit, it is vital that nothing gives off noxious fumes in an underground train so at that time it meant a strong emphasis on natural materials. The original grooved wooden floor was replaced by similarly grooved solid rubber flooring in colours that suited the SPT branding of the time. The interiors were re-sprayed a warm cream colour and the lighting upgraded.

But the key to the design was the upholstery, throughout the history of public transport this has been the most important place where identity and era can be perceived. Wire woven moquette has been used in all forms of public transport for over 100 years in the UK, prized for its colour saturation and durability and made from 85% wool, 15% nylon. We worked closely with textile designer Pat Lumsden and the UK manufacturer 200 year old John Holdsworth and Co, now trading as Camira, and took inspiration from the exciting mid century geometrical designs originally commissioned by London Transport from textile designers such as Enid Marx, Marion Dorn, Paul Nash and later Douglas Scott for the Routemaster bus. There are particular limitations with this type of fabric, woven on a metex wire loom at 127cm width, the width is built up of four sections, each comprising 200 ends, the repeat is across 25 ends. Thus restricted tightly in scale and with a four colour limit, it was definitely a challenge when looking to create something fun and expressive for a vibrant industrial city like Glasgow. The fabric itself is still catalogued at Camira as ‘Clockwork Orange’.

Clockwork Orange fabric, © Shed Number 2 Ltd.

It was imperative that we use their signature orange, of course, and this was tempered with dark red, a pale and a dark grey. Pat created numerous designs by colouring the grids on graph paper with magic markers until we had a shortlist to get sampled by the manufacturer. The client then chose from this selection and then fire testing was conducted on the finished fabric, checking for such parameters as spread of flame, smoke toxicity and smoke density. We paired it with dark red leather by Scottish company Andrew Muirhead on traditionally constructed ergonomic sprung seats. The fact that they have lasted so well is a testament to the use of high quality natural materials, intrinsically sustainable both in materiality and longevity, before that was even a thing. Incidentally, Pat also used to make us lunch in the studio!

I recently spoke about my involvement on social media when these much loved trains were being replaced with hi-tech new ones and the outpouring of emotion, grief even, as well as so many stories of fun times on the Clockwork Orange flooded in. Even my friends in Scotland didn’t know I had been one of the designers. At TLS we didn’t know it at the time but we were part of creating an icon, one that very much captured the hearts of the city dwellers and visitors it served, very noisily, for so many decades. One carriage now takes pride of place at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow along side its Victorian predecessors.

The seats are being sold off, and so are the carriages - I am excited to see what people make them into. And in the meantime if you want your own little piece of this textile history, products and fabric by the metre can be purchased from shedno2.co.uk and you can even buy socks and mugs emblazoned with the design from glasgowsubway.orbgroup.co.uk.

Anna Campbell-Jones is director of Habitus Design Ltd. and presenter of Scotland’s Home of the Year on BBC1 Scotland and iPlayer. She is also developing some products inspired by the moquette which are available from here.