BY GEORGIA TASKER

Radiologist Dr. Al Eiber and his wife, Kim, collect furniture from the 1950s.

”There’s not a great term for what we collect,” Eiber said. “Some people call it ’50s furniture. I guess modern design is the closest term.”

The Eibers of Miami Beach began collecting just after they were married 25 years ago.


”As we got more educated, we could get more selective, and we befriended many architects. If you buy one or two pieces a year, in 25 years, you’ve got a lot,” he said.

As an avid design fan, Eiber attends the Modernism Show each year in New York.

Last year, he visited the three-day Design Miami show five or six times, and came away impressed.

“I believe this show is stronger than New York. I think it’s the strongest design show in the world.”

Design Miami, a design forum, is only three years old yet it draws those kinds of rave reviews, as well as top furnishings designers from around the world. Activities center on the Moore Building, 4040 NE Second Ave., Miami, and run parallel with Art Basel/Miami Beach, Dec. 7 through 9.

For collectors such as Eiber, “It’s like going to a museum.”

In addition to talks and performances by designers who assemble pieces throughout the three days, Design Miami is a display of furniture, lighting and glass products that teeter between useful and artful under the label “collectible design.”

Craig Robins, the Miami Beach art collector and developer, defines collectible design as “important historic modern design and important contemporary limited edition design.”

Modern design emerged from the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As machines reshaped the world, there were two basic responses: to revolt against machine-made products or to design for the machine.

Designers such as Gio Ponti, who began working in the 1920s and is considered a pioneer of designing for industry, and Jean Prouvé, who used engineering principles to create machine-produced furniture, are in the modern category. Robins has furnished his new home in Aqua, the New Urbanist community on Miami Beach, with Ponti furnishings.

Even after World War II, ”In the 1950s, designers were all about function,” said George Lindemann, who is in the commercial real estate business in Miami, Tennessee and Mexico, and who collects furnishings. But as new materials and technologies continue to evolve, machines can turn out less elemental design.

”When we think of machine age design, we think geometric shapes, tubular steel furniture,” said Marianne Lamonaca, associate director for curatorial affairs at the Wolfsonian-FIU on Miami Beach. “What it means to design for the machine today is different, and we can have very complicated shapes and highly decorative patterns.”

More contemporary designers are venturing into the ornate, Lindemann said. One example is Mattia Bonetti, whom Lindemann collects.

”Bonetti did most of the carpets in my house and some of the furniture,” he said. “The carpets are whimsical and ornate. Not figurative. They have patterns and squares and circles. He would be more of a form over function type of designer.

“Today, there’s a whole design discourse on whether an object needs to be refined to the useful minimum or whether the form and look can take on more importance in the work.”

The hottest designer today is Marc Newson, said Eiber and Lindemann. Newson was Design Miami’s Designer of the Year in 2013, and as part of his participation in Design Miami, he agreed to create a fence for DASH, the Design and Architecture High School. It is scheduled to be installed Tuesday along the school’s courtyard, bordering Northeast Second Avenue in Miami’s Design District

While he has designed products for Ford, Nike and Swarovski, Newson’s 20-year-old limited edition aluminum chair design, called Lockheed Lounge, was auctioned for $968,000 last year at Sotheby’s in New York. In October, one of the chairs was auctioned at Christie’s in London for $1.5 million.

So why does a piece of furniture command the price of a modest country estate? Why the great interest in collectible design?

Cathy Leff, director of the Wolfsonian-FIU, says the reasons are many. “I would not say one museum or one exhibit is responsible for the rise in interest in design. It’s cumulative. It’s the museums, the industry, and surely the rise of celebrity architects and designers. . . . I also think smart strategies of companies like Target and Apple, which recognize that design sells, have made design more affordable.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the accumulation of wealth has fueled the art and design markets, said Leff. “You have people buying more luxury residences and filling them with luxury products.”

‘The run-up of prices in the visual arts has been so out of control, that all of a sudden value buyers, people interested in collecting in which they might make money, looked at design and said, `Why is a great Marc Newson selling for $1 million but Damian Hirst is selling for $20 million?’ ” said Lindemann.

Another contributing factor to the collectibility of design: Design Miami.

”Craig Robins and Ambra Medda put the fair together,” Lindemann said. “The fact that Art Basel would attach itself to a design fair has given the whole area a tremendous boost.”

Medda and Amy Lau co-founded the event in 2004 with financial support from Robins. ”It’s a great place to connect with all the important people from design and arts and the architecture community,” Medda said.

Robins said, “Design Miami changed the world. It was the first time that collected design was seen and treated on the same level as art, and in a real art context. It changed everybody’s perspective, including mine.”

”Design has become an art form,” said radiologist Eiber, adding that there may be a downside to paying $160,000 for a chair. “What do you do with it? Sit in it? I’d be afraid to sit in it. You scratch it, dent it, your kids run into it.”

Lindemann, however, insists that collectible design can be useful. When a new baby became part of his family, some furniture had to be stored. But it may reemerge.

”One of the most appealing things about collecting design is that one can use it. I can sit on it, and live with it, and so it’s like a double whammy,” he said. “I get the pleasure of a collected object, but also a useful piece of furniture.”