This week gallerists will see if the double-header of design and art events PAD and Art Paris will be enough to bring people back to the city after last November’s attacks. Paris suffered a drop in tourism directly after, and though it remains the number one travel destination in the world, the city still hasn’t quite regained full strength. Paris Photo closed its doors early following the events, and security is still tight after Brussels events. Some gallerists, like Edith Flak of Galerie Flak, worried that collectors might not take the risk to come to PAD.

“PAD is very Parisian and very playful,” she said. “The public is usually very impatient to get in. This year, we will see.”

Flak is a PAD veteran who has exhibited at the salon since its debut 20 years ago. When the salon began, Flak said it was mostly antiques dealers. In just two decades it has been flooded with contemporary design, which Flak says directly “corresponds to the tastes of people.”

Her gallery is one of the few antiquities dealers that has come back year after year as others have fallen away. “Primitive art links to modern art,” she said citing Picasso as an obvious example. Flak’s Hopi Kachina dolls were the centerpiece of Jean-Louis Boullitte’s superb stand design, using gray metal panels.

French dealers reign supreme at PAD, with galleries from London, Brussels, Stockholm and New York peppered in.

Franck Laigneau, whom the PAD Prize Jury named the best stand, had sold almost all of his anthroposophical wooden furniture in the range of €10,000 (about $11,130) to €40,000, such as a bed frame that looked to be designed for a child giant. Laigneau was preparing to reinstall for the weekend.

Galerie Gosserez drew in visitors – including polarizing French design star Ora Ito – with Damien Gernay’s textured leather coffee table painted black and titled “Black Sea,” priced at €4,900. Piergil Fourquié’s low tables of perfectly blown glass bases with printed leather and printed aluminum table tops that evoked Goyard (€3,900) also received consistent inquiries.

The gallery Antonine Catzéflis featured Nicolas Cesbron’s sea urchin lamps which had sold ranging from €1,200 to €2,400. His sprawling chandelier in the same style at €2,800 was still available.

Pol Bury’s kinetic coffee table with twitching sphere’s atop a black surface was listed for €25,000 at Martin Grenier, which had sold a pair of Fratelli Marelli mirrors for €8,000. A gallerist said that he, like Flak, was worried attendance would be weaker this year after the attacks, but so far he was pleased with the salon’s crowd at the VIP preview.

While Galerie Negropontes calls its presentation “Colored Abstractions,” it’s anything but abstract with its bold geometric shapes and deep, lush colors. Hervé Langlais updates mid-century design with contemporary flare such as a pentagonal mirror with a dark-emerald-green beveled frame and gold accents.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery created a collector’s home that fluidly melded modern and African tribal motifs with a contemporary patina and understated primitive art themes. Director Cédric Morisset said the styling was a “forecast” for an upcoming Paris show in May.

Morisset said buyers at PAD London, now in its 10th edition, take more risks in their acquisitions than at the Paris event, which he said attracts “the best interior designers in the world,” and where “it’s more about the haute décoration.”

CWG had sold a Wendel Cassel ash wood coffee table at €90,000, a colossal Thomas Howzigo tribal mask for €110,000, and had several other pieces in negotiations.

Several clever works from Loïc Bigot’s gallery play tricks on the eye – and ask to be played with. Dutch designer Pleunie Buyink’s sculptures appear to be ultra-luxurious glass pieces. However, to the touch, they bend and reveal themselves to be rubber. At €1,500 to €4,900, Bigot says the jelly jewels are “rather inexpensive for the effect.”

Cologne’s Amman Galerie had a limited-edition series of Nucleo’s resin and wood tables listed at €26,000 and a unique coffee table in the same materials for €42,000. Nacho Carbonnel’s resin-and-sand lamps in various sizes at Galerie BSL were priced at €5,900 to €19,000.

A gallerist at London’s Fumi said its booth was about 20-percent sold, including a small piece from Lukas Wegwerth’s crystalized sculptures that can fetch as much as €16,000.

Galerie des Modernes and Galerie Fleury stuck to wall art, with works by Calder, Dubuffet, Ernst, Giacometti, Léger and Warhol. A dealer at Bernard Bouisset called its offering of classic fine jewelry pieces from Boucheron, Fred, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels “vintage Vendome.” A 19.8-carat Ceylon sapphire ring from 1930 stood out among its case companions.

Oldrich Pliva’s large cut-glass ring “Obrazek” from glass queen Clara Scremini will be gifted to the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs by Moët Hennessy. Ben Storms’s polished mirror table fitted with steel and leather was awarded “best contemporary design” and Jacque Lacoste’s 1965 modern stain glass panel received the honor of “Best 20th Century Decorative Arts.”

On the first day of the salon, the packed aisles in the evening were a good sign that collectors weren’t going to miss out on perusing beautiful design. If sales weren’t flying as they were for Laigneau, steady inquiries and one-off sales were promising that collectors would return over the weekend to pick up that perfect piece for their home.