Modern Living: Those Designing Europeans

Ars gratia artis, art for art's sake, was a centuries-old plea in Europe. No longer. On the Continent today, art, architecture and artisanship are aimed at luring the consumer in addition to rewarding the creator. Reaching out from their venerable tradition of studio work, European designers, handling new materials and technologies, are raising the quality of life.

In the U.S. and most of Western Europe, for example, the fashionable look for the '75 woman is layered, long-skirted, booted and topped off with a cape; and much of it came together in the drawing rooms...