A design collector could walk into any Vitra retail store and leave with a brand-new version of French designer Jean Prouvé’s 1954 Antony chair for $1,310; or that same buyer could spend nearly $35,000—as someone did last May at the Wright auction house, in Chicago—on a vintage example of an Antony. Vitra also offers, for $3,500, George Nelson’s instantly recognizable Marshmallow sofa, a vintage example of which went for $129,000 at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York in 2002.

Despite such five-figure price differences, some dealers and connoisseurs insist that copies like those at Vitra water down the market for design. Others, however, say reproductions are no big deal. In a market that’s still defining itself—especially with respect to what, exactly, limited editions are—the debate remains heated.

The reissue of midcentury classics is nothing new, but “it seems to be happening more and more,” says the New York–based modern-design dealer Cristina Grajales. “Think of Cassina with the Charlotte Perriand collection and Pucci with Vladimir Kagan’s furniture.” In 2005, Grajales became part of the trend through a collaboration with Perimeter Editions, a specialty firm and gallery in Paris, launched in 2003 by Pascale Revert. Perimeter produces limited editions of pieces that were conceived by a constellation of famous French names but that, as director, Nicolas Chwat, puts it, “have not come to life before or have existed only as drawings or prototypes.” Still, Grajales notes, “it took Perimeter a while to convince me, because I’ve only worked in the past with originals.”

So far in her gallery Grajales has introduced reissues of creations by the Bauhaus-influenced postwar French designer Janette Laverrière. These include her 1966 Nenuphar mirrored table—only one of which was originally produced—for $35,000, from a Perimeter edition of 12, and a steel-framed armchair from 1944, which sells for $14,000 in a Perimeter edition of 50.

At the other end of the retail spectrum, consumers can shop at one of White Furniture’s four New York stores for a knockoff of Charles and Ray Eames’s iconic chaise ($900) which, like all the firm’s offerings, is made in China. The Web site offers this disclaimer: “Our products are not manufactured by, sponsored by, affiliated with or associated with Herman Miller, Knoll, Fritz Hansen or other companies.”

Indeed, those companies frequently produce their own reissues of their vintage designs. Knoll, for example, has been dipping into its famous archive since the mid-1990s and introduces one or two reproductions a year. In June 2004, an executive with the firm noticed that a prototype of the onetime Knoll designer Harry Bertoia’s asymmetrical steel-wire chaise from 1952 had sold for $118,000 at Wright. “I think Bertoia designed it for his kids,” says Elizabeth Needle, a senior vice president at Knoll. “For whatever reason, it never went into production.” After the auction, she says, “we thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s a market for this thing.’ ” Knoll sent an engineer to the home of the auction buyer to take detailed measurements of the chair, then put it into production; it now lists for $7,000.

The Bertoia chaise is not marketed as a unique piece, but some reissues are promoted as limited editions. Although these re-creations usually require the blessing of the makers’ estates or heirs, their “limited edition” designation has created controversy in the design trade.

Take the Danish designer Poul Kjaerholm’s circa 1953 Aluminum Tripod Chair. An example still sporting its original yellow paint came up in June 2005 at Sotheby’s New York, estimated at $40,000 to $60,000. It failed to sell, despite the fact, noted in the sale catalogue, that only 10 of the chairs had been produced and, of those, only two retained their initial colors.

Then, last year, the New York galleries Sean Kelly and R 20th Century, in close collaboration with the Kjaerholm family, jointly reissued the famous chair in editions of 25 for each of the four colors offered—yellow, blue, gray and black—plus 8 artist proofs. Prices for the Tripod reproductions, which are handmade in Denmark and have been selling briskly at both galleries, started at $12,000 when they debuted at Design Miami last December. As the editions sell, that amount increases, much as prices for photographic editions rise with sales. The yellow and blue Tripods are currently $15,000; gray and black chairs are still $12,000.

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.”

“Dealers can be sensitive if they’ re showing original versions of whatever it is and then there is a reedition of the same or similar pieces,” says Suzanne Demisch, of the New York gallery Demisch Danant, which works closely with Parisian designer Maria Pergay to produce new and limited editions of her sleek metal furniture. “I don’t think it affects the market as long as people know what they are buying.”

But as more and more designs come to exist as reasonably priced reproductions that can be bought by the masses, the originals may become less interesting to the collecting elite. The market for Charles and Ray Eames suffered just such a dilution in value after the Modernica company churned out clones of the couple’s midcentury furnishings in the 1990s. It could take years to tell if the same fate will befall the originals from Kjaerholm, Laverrière and Prouvé—or whether, indeed, their newly editioned works will appreciate in value or, like the many casts of Rodin’s Thinker, suffer from familiarity.

"Issues with Reissues" originally appeared in the April 2008 issue Art + Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2008 Table of Contents.