Many dealers, like a great many collectors, have chosen to focus on modern French design. The Swedish-born, New York–based dealer Stellan Holm favors Jean Prouvé, whose furniture he began buying 10 years ago. “His pieces are uncomfortable and totally impractical, but I like them,” says Holm, who was a secondary-market dealer until a few years ago, when he opened his Chelsea gallery, presenting a varied program that ranges from young artists to the estate of William Burroughs. “They have an edgy, almost industrial look. They don’t look like anything that came before them. Whereas a lot of modern designers look like they got a lot of their ideas from Prouvé.”

The Swiss-born dealer Dominique Lévy, who runs New York’s L&M Arts with the former Wall Street titan Robert Mnuchin, started her design collection 15 years ago. In the beginning she, like Holm, favored mid-20th-century French furniture by Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Royère, but she has since diversified. Guided mostly by Didier Krzentowski, of Galerie Kreo, in Paris, Lévy moved on to newer designers, like Ron Arad, Marc Newson, Ettore Sottsass and Martin Szekely. In the Tribeca loft that she shares with her partner, the film producer Dorothy Berwin, and their two sons, she has pieces by all these designers mixed with flea-market finds—not to mention blue-chip contemporary art by the likes of Franz Ackermann, Julie Mehretu and Cindy Sherman. Unlike Harrisburg and other collectors who decorate in subdued tones so as not to detract from their artworks, Lévy embraces bold colors, combining a shocking-pink coffee table by Mattia Bonetti, a bright orange chandelier by Verner Panton and a grass-green TV vase by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec. “I feel that things of quality complement each other,” she explains.

Some dealers, such as the Swedish-born Per Skarstedt, bucked the French trend early on. When Skarstedt, whose Manhattan gallery specializes in historical exhibitions of contemporary American and European artists, began his design collection 10 years ago, he acquired objects by such Danish talents as Kjaerholm, Finn Juhl and Hans Wegner. These now fill the Upper East Side duplex where he lives with his wife, Helena, and their two children. The simple blond-wood, brushed-steel, stone and leather furniture works well with their in-your-face art by George Condo, Willem de Kooning and Richard Prince, the last of whom Skarstedt says he recently turned on to Danish design.

Perry Rubenstein, too, has swerved away from the French, in his case concentrating instead on the wood furniture of Mira Nakashima, the daughter of George. The first items a visitor sees upon entering the spacious Chelsea loft that he shares with his wife, the art world publicist Sarah Fitzmaurice, and their two daughters are a burled redwood coffee table by Nakashima and, above it, a canary-yellow 2004 vinyl wall work, Grove of Trees in El Tigre Viewed on the Way to El Tropezón, by the Argentinean-born artist Santiago Cucullu, whom Rubenstein represents. “Every edge is free,” says the dealer, marveling at Nakashima’s handiwork. “It’s the most extreme version of a table that would fit my contemporary aesthetic, my minimal aesthetic, and also retain the spirit of the 1970s.”

Although Rubenstein has presented a show of Nakashima, and Kelly has shown Kjaerholm’s work in his gallery, art dealers generally agree that design is more of a personal interest than a commercial one. “Collecting great furniture is fun and rewarding, and it’s relaxing, frankly, because it’s not my job,” says Holm. “I can look at something without the intention of selling it.” As for Skarstedt, any sale he has made of a design object so far has been accidental. Such was the case with the round stone-top Kjaerholm table in his booth at last year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. “The first day a collector came in and asked if he could buy it,” the dealer recalls. “I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’ ” The question was rhetorical, but it does, in fact, have an answer: Exhibitors at the contemporary-art fair are technically not allowed to sell design.