Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch’s Quasi Cabinet (2007) sold for $35,000 at Johnson Trading Gallery's booth.

Doom and gloom predictions about the design market, whose fate has seemed tethered to the coattails of the suddenly unstable contemporary art market, faded to white noise after a cross-section of Design Miami exhibitors recorded modest sales in the fair’s opening days.

This year's edition is handsomely situated in an airy, generously proportioned, Aranda/Lasch-designed exhibition tent erected in the epicenter of the Miami Design District. The temporary structure encourages unhurried looking and has drawn praise from both exhibitors and visitors.

Following the barely trafficked first full day of the fair on Wednesday, when big brother Art Basel Miami Beach had its preview across the bay, the mood on Thursday was subdued and cautious but not funereal, as many had feared.

“I have to say, it’s slow,” said seasoned Parisian dealer Patrick Seguin. “But if we sell 10 or 20 percent less, we don’t care, so long as there is some action.”

Seguin reported selling a group of four Jean Prouvé “Standard” chairs from the early 1950s in metal and wood to an American collector for $32,000.

But there seemed to be little demand for higher-end material in his booth, such as the rare and unique Pierre Jeanneret “Auberge” table from 1942, priced at $240,000. The designer used the piece in his own home in Grenoble.

New York’s Demisch Danant gallery sold a handful of vintage pieces, including a stunning pair of rattan Tripod chairs by Joseph André Motte from 1949 in the $30,000 range; a desk in Palissander and glass from 1960 by Antoine Philippon and Jacqueline Lecoq in the $50,000 range; and a black lacquer cabinet by Maria Pergay from 1977 in the $75,000 range.

“Everything we’ve sold so far is under $100,000,” said partner Suzanne Demishch. “But I think the overall mood is positive.”

That assessment was echoed by Franklin Getchell, co-owner of Moss gallery, which has branches in New York and Los Angeles. “It’s been slow but not as slow as we thought it could be,” he said.

The gallery sold one über-Baroque piece mirror from Studio Job’s new suite of works, “Bavaria.” The elaborately crafted work, from an edition of 6, sold for $70,000 to an American collector.

The gallery also noted keen interest from another collector in a second piece in the series, a bench priced at $120,000. “People are just being more careful and there are fewer of them (looking), so it’s happening more slowly,” Getchell said.

Surprisingly, the superstar Campana Brothers, winners of the fair’s 2008 Designer of the Year Award, had yet to sell anything at Moss, the Brazilians’ North American representative. The brothers were offering, among other items, their cute and cuddly Banquete Chair with Pandas, priced at $75,000.

But over at the booth of Kenny Schacter/Rove Projects, the big contemporary names seemed to click. The London gallery sold a complete version of Zaha Hadid’s Kloris (2008), a 10-unit cluster of seating elements fabricated in fiberglass with chrome finish, for $500,000. Though this was a discounted price, Schachter was thrilled, since the sale came on the heels of unloading individual units from another version of the work — it’s an edition of 12 (plus two artist proofs) — at prices ranging between $40–60,000.

“There are high-quality people here,” said the dealer, “and it’s the best fair they’ve done.”

Schachter also sold three works in mirror-polished stainless steel by Arik Levy, including Log Corner, Rock Grid Medium and Rock Grid Large, at asking prices ranging from $18,650 to $55,000. The pieces, which all come from 2008, can be used as tables or seating elements.

Contemporary works were also moving at New York’s Johnson Trading Gallery, as temporary tent makers Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch’s prototype the Quasi Console (2008) in solid walnut as well as the duo's Quasi Cabinet (2007) in CNC milled wood, from an edition of 6, sold for prices listed at $45,000 and $35,000, respectively.

Despite the low-key atmosphere, the fair was not without controversy, following the 11th-hour eviction by the fair’s vetting committee of five posthumously created works by Japanese design icon Shiro Kuramata, which were brought by Tokyo’s Clear Gallery — this despite the fact that the works, first designed in the late ’60s and early ’70s, were produced with the express permission of the artist’s widow, Mieko Kuramata.

Efforts to reach fair founder and director Ambra Medda for comment did not materialize, but the organizers issued the following statement: “The vetting committee of Design Miami has asked Clear Gallery to remove several pieces from their presentation this year, which, although beautiful, did not conform to the fair’s established guidelines. Design Miami is committed to ensuring that the material presented at the fair is of the highest quality and historical provenance.”

A source close to Clear countered: “They were made specifically by the same company that made the originals and were produced under the full authorization of the widow.”

The evicted pieces were Plastic Wardrobe from 1968, Illuminated Revolving Cabinet from 1973, Luminous Chair from 1969, Plastic Wagon from 1968, and Luminous Table from 1969. All were done in transparent acrylic.

Clear was left with a decidedly minimal, though striking, installation comprised of Claudio Colucci’s antique chairs covered with rigid polyurethane foam and dipped in urethane paint.

One of these, dipped in a shocking shade of lemon yellow, from an overall edition of 50, sold to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for $3,800. The chair will be included in a 2009 exhibition at the museum on European design since 1985.

By the end of the day, the design market had found some new adherents as Chicago-based first-time fairgoers John and Kathi Buck bought Guillaume Bardet’s curvy Carrara marble “Moby Dick” arm chair from 2008, from a limited edition of 8 (plus 2 prototypes and 2 artist proofs), for a price in the $50,000 range.

“We made the plunge,” said John Buck, standing in the booth of Paris’s Perimeter Editions, Bardet’s dealer.

“It’s going to wind up in our new home in Colorado.”