ABSTRACT
At the opening of the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony in 1901, Peter Behrens
presented a Zeichen or sign. It took the form of a crystal, and was offered as an
emblem of transformation: just as carbon, under conditions of intense heat and
pressure can metamorphose into diamond, so everyday life could be raised to a
higher plane by art. More famously, crystal metaphors came to fascinate the
German expressionists, stimulating the ‘Glass Dream’ of Paul Scheerbart and
Bruno Taut and related utopian visions.
