Despite the low-key atmosphere, the fair was not without controversy, following the 11th-hour eviction by the fair’s vetting committee of five posthumously created works by Japanese design icon Shiro Kuramata, which were brought by Tokyo’s Clear Gallery — this despite the fact that the works, first designed in the late ’60s and early ’70s, were produced with the express permission of the artist’s widow, Mieko Kuramata.

Efforts to reach fair founder and director Ambra Medda for comment did not materialize, but the organizers issued the following statement: “The vetting committee of Design Miami has asked Clear Gallery to remove several pieces from their presentation this year, which, although beautiful, did not conform to the fair’s established guidelines. Design Miami is committed to ensuring that the material presented at the fair is of the highest quality and historical provenance.”

A source close to Clear countered: “They were made specifically by the same company that made the originals and were produced under the full authorization of the widow.”

The evicted pieces were Plastic Wardrobe from 1968, Illuminated Revolving Cabinet from 1973, Luminous Chair from 1969, Plastic Wagon from 1968, and Luminous Table from 1969. All were done in transparent acrylic.   

Clear was left with a decidedly minimal, though striking, installation comprised of Claudio Colucci’s antique chairs covered with rigid polyurethane foam and dipped in urethane paint.

One of these, dipped in a shocking shade of lemon yellow, from an overall edition of 50, sold to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for $3,800. The chair will be included in a 2009 exhibition at the museum on European design since 1985.

By the end of the day, the design market had found some new adherents as Chicago-based first-time fairgoers John and Kathi Buck bought Guillaume Bardet’s curvy Carrara marble “Moby Dick” arm chair from 2008, from a limited edition of 8 (plus 2 prototypes and 2 artist proofs), for a price in the $50,000 range.

“We made the plunge,” said John Buck, standing in the booth of Paris’s Perimeter Editions, Bardet’s dealer.

“It’s going to wind up in our new home in Colorado.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.