A Meander down on Baker Street

Last year I was asked to make a quilt by someone who had just bought an elegant flat on Baker Street. Chiltern Court was designed by Charles Walter Clark for the Metropolitan Railway and built in 1929. In his architectural guide to North West London, Pevsner described it as “a stately classical pile”. Today Transport for London remains the freeholder and London’s oldest Tube station occupies the ground and nether floors.

My client wanted a piece for the drawing room wall that would complement the 1930s, slightly municipal elegance of the environment. His genius idea was to have it patchworked in the colours of the five Underground lines that intersect in the station below: Bakerloo, Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Jubilee. We chose the Meander design which, without being literal (and without Harry Beck’s 45° angles) suggests a transport map.

I set about sourcing linens, a task made simpler by my delighted discovery that TFL’s colour guidelines are a public document published online. Hammersmith & City pink was a tricky match, but the Cloth House turned up trumps with their magnificent array of Khadi cottons, containing a cold, sugared pink with a slubby texture that complemented the Irish and Baltic linens. We agreed that a bronze silk frame could subtly evoke old-style railway station hardware.

The quilt and its owner look down on the above-ground tracks of the Metropolitan Line. With the distant rumble of trains arriving and leaving below, and intermittent reminders to mind the gap, it’s the height of urban romance.