Courtesy Van de Weghe

Andy Warhol's "Self-Portrait" (1977) on Polaroid sold for $18,000 at the joint booth of Van de Weghe and Vedovi.

Andy Warhol Pablo Picasso Francis Bacon Marc Chagall Raoul Dufy George Grosz Otto Dix Alfred Kubin

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Traffic was light but steady on Thursday, and commerce had the same leisurely but studied pace as the scene at Frieze. The fair opened Wednesday and runs through Sunday, but so far, none of the heavy-hitting, seven-figure modern works, such as the £4 million ($6.5 million) Picasso at London’s Lefevre Fine Art or the $9 million Francis Bacon at Faggionato Fine Art, have sold.

Lower-priced big-name fare was moving, such as Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait (1977) on Polaroid, for $18,000, and a postcard-sized Nature Morte (1922) by Picasso, in wax, pencil, and crayon, at $80,000. Both were at the joint Van de Weghe/Vedovi booth.

“There’s quite a lot of interest,” said Paolo Vedovi, “but not many sales. People want to see what’s happening at the auctions before making up their minds. There is a market and there are buyers, but there is an issue, and that’s price.”

That sentiment was more or less echoed by Alexander Corcoran of Lefevre. “With this kind of thing,” said the dealer, referring to his stand of pricey modern works, “it’s not a snap decision.”

Corcoran said Picasso’s Portrait de Sylvette, on offer for £4 million, had several reserves, signaling that no one had pulled the trigger yet.

Expressing a kind of quiet optimism, fellow dealer Richard Nagy grudgingly acknowledged a quartet of sales, including Alfred Kubin’s early ink on paper, circa 1901–02, of a mythic Siberian monster; two George Grosz street scenes in watercolor and ink from the mid-1920s; and an Otto Dix, all at prices ranging from £50,000 to £250,000.

At London’s Connaught Brown gallery, none of the Raoul Dufy or Marc Chagall works on offer, at prices ranging from £110,000 to $855,000, had sold, but Director Anthony Brown said he was pleased that young London designer Tom Price had sold one of his Meltdown chairs in PVC hose from 2009 to an American collector for £2,000. The chair was strategically placed underneath a Dufy interior that included an elegant-looking 18th-century-style chair, but the price appeared shockingly low, at least in comparison with the rest of the stately stand.

But Brown seemed optimistic nonetheless. “I’ve seen the best people here,” he said, adding, “I’ve never been at a fair when so many of my clients have enjoyed it.”

Edgy London design gallery Carpenters Workshop enjoyed a flurry of sales on Thursday morning, including a set of five quirky, carved pieces in Indian rosewood, bird’s eye maple, and matt polyurethane coating by Studio Job, which went to U.K.-based fund manager and major design collector Julian Treger for €220,000. The pieces, which feature an elaborate web of inlaid images and range from a screen to a table, are from an edition of six and date between 2007 and 2009. “You can still smell the glue,” said Director Loic le Gaillard.

The gallery also sold the Dutch collective Demakersvan’s Cinderella Table (2008) in white Carrara marble from an edition of six, for £175,000, and the collective rAndom International’s You Fade to Light (2009), which comprises more than a thousand Lumiblade LEDs and a motion-tracing system that captures movement, for £140,000.

Gaillard said he also sold two editions of rAndom International’s ultra-high-tech Study for Mirror (2008) in Corian glass, photochromic pigment, and stainless steel, at £15,000 apiece.

“I was super-nervous setting up on Monday,” said Gaillard. “A lot of people came on Tuesday and nothing happened, and then everyone went to Frieze on Wednesday and then finally came here. It was explosive!”

There was also steady action at Paris-based Perimeter Editions, which sold a reissue of Pierre Paulin’s rare Cathedral Table in glass and laser-cut metal from an edition of eight, plus two artist proofs, for £24,000. They had existed only as prototypes until Paulin collaborated with Perimeter on the new edition before his death earlier this year.