The appearance at the Miami fair of the chairs along with three other Kjaerholm designs—including the Reol Modular Bookcase, which previously existed only in prototype—caused some outcry. “It harmed the fair,” says a member of the event’s vetting committee who insisted on anonymity.  “A few other dealers were infuriated, because they were exhibiting period examples of not only Kjaerholm but some other pieces that R 20th and Sean Kelly have chosen to reissue. The focus of the fair was to present either authentic, early vintage furniture or limited editions by contemporary designers, and these works didn’t fit in either category.”

Zesty Meyers, the co-owner of R 20th Century, brushes off the criticism: “We’ve always been met with controversy as we’ve pushed things forward, so it’s only to be expected that someone would not be happy.” He says that the Kjaerholm project was a painstaking and costly undertaking and adds, “I don’t see the problem with producing an edition.These are things that were almost never available—the bookcase we showed was prototyped but never made and the version of the PK-12 dining chair we had was only made three times. So it wasn’t like these things were ever massively available.”

Kelly, evidently unaware of the criticism at Design Miami of the limited editions, says, “I think everybody really embraced the work. Nobody has said to us, ‘Oh, my God! What are you doing?’ It’s been very positive.” The dealer, with R 20th century, underwrote the recently published Kjaerholm catalogue raisonné and staged an exhibition of the designer’s pieces installed alongside works by such contemporary artists as Vija Celmins and Gerhard Richter. The reissues, he explains, were targeted specifically at art collectors. “We decided to make these in limited editions and position them within the context of the art world. These are pieces that for various reasons were not made during Kjaerholm’s lifetime, but we wanted to produce them as artworks. They just happen to be furniture.”

Meanwhile, Fritz Hansen, the Danish company that holds licenses to most of Kjaerholm’s output, has manufactured uneditioned reissues of some prototypes. Among these is the prototype for the PK-8 chair, which now sells for $1,000.

“If you’re marketing them as collectibles or limited editions,” says the auctioneer Richard Wright, “I think the future value of these things isn’t exactly where I would bet my money. In terms of a financial strategy, I would rather buy a great vintage piece for whatever price I could afford than buy a reissue.”

The thorny questions surrounding the new productions and how they’re marketed were spotlighted again at last November’s contemporary-design sale at Sotheby’s New York, where 13 designs by the Brazilian master architect Oscar Niemeyer were offered to benefit the architect’s Rio de Janeiro–based foundation. The chairs, tables and other pieces were marketed as “prototypes”—though not of rare items manufactured decades ago, but of newly-minted reissues. Only one item sold, and that piece, a bench in lacquered wood and cane, brought $31,000, well below its estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.

“We presented prototypes of the reedition, and it was a big mistake on my part,” concedes James Zemaitis, the head of Sotheby’s postwar and contemporary design department. “I misread how people would react to it, and it just didn’t catch on.”

As it happens, only just a few weeks later, R 20th Century brought to Design Miami versions of those same Niemeyer pieces. The numbered, but not editioned, works were priced from $8,000 to $28,000.

Like the Kjaerholm reissues, the Niemeyer pieces raised some eyebrows in Miami. “Look,” says R 20th Century’s co-owner Evan Snyderman. “We choose the things we produce carefully, and they have to be things that are basically unavailable otherwise. In the end, it only increases the value of the original work—if it exists—because collectors will always want the original, and the value will always be greater.”