A Novel by Paul Scheerbart, translated, illustrated and with critical introduction by John Stuart.
The German architectural visionary, author, inventor, and artist Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) wrote several fictional utopian narratives related to glass architecture. In The Gray Cloth, the first of his novels to be translated into English, Scheerbart uses subtle irony and the structural simplicity of a fairy tale to present the theories of colored glass outlined in his well-known treatise Glass Architecture. In his introduction, Stuart surveys Scheerbart’s career and role in German avant-garde circles, as well as his architectural and social ideas. Stuart shows fiction to be a resource for the study of architecture and places The Gray Cloth in the context of German Expressionism.