Even the constant background noise of jets flying over the Design District didn’t spoil the buoyant atmosphere in Design Miami's sleek temporary tent structure this week.

This petite venue, housing just 14 international design galleries in its fifth year (down from 23 last year), is tiny compared to the newly expanded, behemoth Art Basel Miami Beach fair, but it packs a powerful aesthetic punch.

The entryway more or less tells it all, boasting Max Lamb’s impressive installation Shelter, a funky labyrinth of black benches and rocklike formations commissioned by New York’s Johnson Trading Gallery.

For a bit of inspiration, Lamb offers a Henry David Thoreau quotation from 1854: “We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter.”

A number of other Lamb works stood out at Johnson Trading Gallery’s stand, among them a group of white “polyscrap” chairs that sold briskly at $4,800 apiece. His more substantive Delaware Bluestone Slice chair and matching small table sold for $20,000 and $6,500 respectively to a Texas collector.

Johnson also sold Korean designer Kwangho Lee’s low-slung woven armchair, made from custom-ordered garden hose, to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, for approximately $6,500.

A Lee woven stool also sold, for $4,000, as did two multi-colored ladders from Ben Jones’s “Beehaven” series, for $3,800 apiece. Jones’s work can also be seen at Art Basel Miami Beach, at Deitch’s booth.

Compared to past years, Design Miami was much more cutting-edge and contemporary, with fewer midcentury modern dealers.

“There aren’t three stands selling [Jean] Prouvé,” said Evan Snyderman of New York’s R 20th Century Gallery, “and it feels very well curated. All the stuff you want to see happen, from meeting new collectors and selling things to [speaking with] foundations, has already happened.”

Snyderman cited a number of sales, including Jeffrey Zimmerman's unique, pod-clustered chandelier in hand-blown glass to a Miami client for $60,000 and his dramatic “wall drawing,” made up of blown glass with a mirror finish and titled “The Silver Surfer Tears,” to a Belgian arts foundation for $50,000.

On the vintage front, R 20th Century sold a fabulous pair of Caviona wood-and-cast-glass doors by the Brazilian designer Joaquim Tenreiro from 1969 to another Florida client for a six-figure price. The gallery also sold all 10 of Tenreiro’s new hot-worked-glass serpent candle holders, at $1,200 each.

“It’s smaller this year,” added Snyderman, “and people seem generally excited to be here.”

Rotterdam’s Vivid Gallery introduced a new “Farm” series comprised of cast and highly polished implements by the smart-alecky collective Studio Job.

One example of “Cap & Hook,” from an edition of eight plus two artist’s proofs, sold for $14,000, according to director Saskia Copper, who noted that New York collector and real estate maven Aby Rosen had visited the stand and expected to make up his mind soon on a number of works.

It seems that contemporary designers are thinking more and more about a kind of apocalyptic time — and escape. The wall label for the “Farm” series explains: “Farm is a tribute to a perfect country life, a fictive farmer and his wife, living in an ignorant and happy scenery, far away from the fear that’s surrounding everyday life.”

New York’s Moss Gallery showed new works by Design Miami’s Designer of the Year Maarten Baas, but wound up selling an earlier “burnt Thonet chair” by the designer from circa 2005 that it hadn’t brought along, for $15,000, according to gallery co-owner Franklin Getchell.

“We’re close on several major things,” said Getchell. “I don’t know how you pull the trigger slowly, but that’s what’s happening.”

There didn’t seem to be much hesitation in terms of commerce at New York’s Paul Kasmin, who is also exhibiting at Art Basel Miami Beach. His stand here is devoted to the Paris designer Mattia Bonetti, who will show at the New York gallery in February. (His last New York outing was at Luhring Augustine in spring 2004.)

Kasmin sold several of Bonetti’s “Branches” — cast-resin, wall-mounted lights — at $17,000 for a five-branch style, $12,000 for three branches, and $8,000 for a single branch. In typical Bonetti style, the lights come in different limited-edition finishes, including gold-gilded and lacquered.

The designer’s prototype “Frequency Cabinet,” in gold-plated polished brass and clear acrylic, from an edition of eight plus two artist proofs and two prototypes, sold for $110,000, and his “Meander Table,” in bronze and acrylic, sold for $40,000.

Kasmin also sold a number of Bonetti’s still-untitled ultra-baroque armchairs in bronze and dyed calf and pony skin, from an edition of 40, for $18,000 each.

“Lots of my Lalanne clients want to buy Bonetti’s work,” said Kasmin, referring to the French designers whose work is currently staged along the green median strip of Park Avenue.

“When you initiate something new,” he added, “you’re never sure what the reaction will be like, but it’s already been successful.”

It didn’t hurt that Bonetti had designed the stand with an inviting organic-shaped platform and overhead scrim.

More modest transactions took place at New York’s Cristina Grajales, who was showing flame-worked, hand-woven glass lights sprayed with a polymer membrane by the Tel Aviv designer Ayala Serfaty. “The Rest” (2006) went to a St. Louis collector couple who are trustees at the Saint Louis Art Museum for $14,000, and a larger free-standing light, “Memory” (2009) was sold to another American collector for $16,000.

Priveekollektie from the Netherlands also saw some sales, including a carved-marble “Sunshare” chair by French designer Emmanuel Babled from an edition of twelve, at €21,000.

Seoul’s Seomi Gallery sold a group of five unique ceramic stools by Hun-Chung Lee at prices ranging $5,000 to $7,000. “A lot of people here want garden furniture,” said the gallery’s Jee Yoon, “so Hun-Chung’s work is appropriate.”

The gallery also sold a handsome, organic-shaped stool in black granite by Byung-Hoon Choi for $35,000.