Imagine yourself a clean-cut architect in late 1950s Southern California, putting the needle down on Sonny Rollins’s “Saxophone Colossus” in your custom music center, while your lady friend nurses her highball. Pierre Koenig’s 1959 music cabinet, on sale at Sotheby’s yesterday afternoon, offered such a fantasy for a mere $16,800.

It seems a small price to pay these days for buyers accustomed to staggeringly average million-dollar-plus sales at contemporary art auctions. Prices are also rising for newer modern and postmodern designers, such as Scott Burton, whose steel chairs from 1989-90 sold for $198,000 at Phillips, de Pury & Company on May 24. “We wanted to bring a more contemporary art evening sale approach to the sale,” said James Zemaitis, director of Sotheby’s 20th-century design department.

To that end, Mr. Zemaitis brought together a sale that was, as he put it, “a survey of 20th-century Modernism as we see it.” Major works by mid-century designers Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouve, and Jean-Michel Frank all did well, for the most part selling well above estimates. The sale totaled $8.4 million, its high estimate.

San Francisco designer John Dickinson is one designer relatively new to the secondary market who, despite an accomplished career, looks fresh. A striking white plaster table lamp, on three legs with articulated feet (c. 1976), sold above estimate for $16,800. Dickinson made pieces for specific clients in his own studio, limiting the number of examples per model.

“The 1970s is definitely finding its niche,” said Mr. Zemaitis. While some of the more pop lots struggled to find buyers, the rougher, more hand wrought-looking works did well. Henry Bertoia’s 1970 Bush sculpture sold for $51,000, more than twice its estimate, while Paul Evans’s 1969 huge welded steel cabinet, which looks like something from Mad Max, sold for $84,000.

A 1972 beachy-looking cane-chair by Danish designer Poul Kjaerholm sold for $42,000. Desirable chairs and tables by Kjaerholm have transcended current market fatigue with Scandinavian design. “Clients are looking for the best items of any era,” said Evan Snyderman of R 20th Century, a TriBeCa mid-century design dealership and gallery. “They want rare and important pieces.”

Mr. Zemaitis is credited by dealers such as Mr. Synderman and Barry Friedman for helping to drag the major auction houses into the mid-20th century and beyond. In yesterday’s sale, Mr. Zemaitis noted, “the only area not included is traditional, schlocky Art Nouveau.” That said, Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann’s ivory-encrusted Colonette table sold for $132,0000, above estimate, although his ivory-encrusted divan, estimated at $300,000 to $400,000, did not sell. Since ivory harvested within the past 100 years old cannot be exported, the table is staying in the States.

At Christie’s sale of 20th-century design, to be held this morning, two leather bergere chairs by Ruhlmann, from around 1925, show a development from Art Deco to a kind of languid modernism. Estimated to sell for between $80,000 and $100,000, they come from the Dakis Joannou collection, which emphasizes French and Italian designs. The 27 lots are expected to bring a total of $1.3 million of the sale’s total estimate of $6 million.

A solidly carved mahogany table by Alexandre Noll, from the 1940s, which rests on three massive paw feet, is estimated to sell at $200,000 to $300,000. “The strength of the sale is in mid-century French, particularly the section from Joannou,” Christie’s international head of 20th-century design, Philippe Garner, said. “It’s about a certain look that still feels modern today but predated mass consumption.”

Greek industrialist Joannou began assembling his collection of Jean Royere “Ours” chairs and Jacques Adnet cabinets in 1996, as he looked for works to go with his contemporary art collection. In this, he is not alone. “There’s certainly a big pull from the art market. People are buying great examples of design to complement their art,” said Mr. Snyderman. “The best design by one of the best designers is still affordable.”

Despite the trend away from more traditional, stolid Art Deco, deference is still paid at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s to perennial powerhouse Tiffany. The first 50 lots at Christie’s today are lamps and other glass designs by Tiffany. The house expects them to bring in $3 million – nearly half the sale’s total. One iris leaded-glass-and-bronze lantern is estimated at $600,000 to $800,0000.

At Sotheby’s, a “peony” table lamp from 1910 sold for $576,000. It was the highest price of the day. In fact, five of the 10 top lots were Tiffany. Arts and crafts pieces in general did very well. A mahogany Greene and Greene chair (c. 1907) went for $408,000, eight times its low estimate.

Christie’s also has not shied away from works from earlier in the century, including Lalique vases and the deliberately lumpen birds and grimacing turtles by Victorian potters the Martin brothers. Two sale highlights are early-century carpets: a hand knotted violet Art Nouveau carpet by Otto Eckmann (c. 1900), estimated at $180,000-$200,000; and a wool carpet designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1916-18 for the stairs of his Bogk house in Milwaukee, estimated at $80,000 to $120,000.

Two striking tables from 1920s France demonstrate how much style can vary within one place and time. A Sue et Mare classic Deco steel table with ornate gilt-bronze floral patterns (c. 1925) is estimated at $100,000 to $150,000. Just two years older, Perriand’s imposing nickled, metal-and-glass table is an icon of her newly arrived at machine-age look. Estimated at $150,000 to $180,000, it “is as minimal as a piece by Carl Andre,” said Mr. Garner.

Christie’s sale ends with a stainless steel 1994 sofa by Ron Arad, estimated at $50,000 to $60,000, which Friedman plans to bid on. Its hard-edged industrialism sits at the expanding edge of the market’s sensibility, alongside pop pieces by Panton and Sottsass and the sensual, limited-edition wood pieces by a cadre of Brazilians, including Jose Zanine, whose carved table from the 1970s is estimated at $8,000 to 12,000. “He’s the Noll of Brazil,” said Mr. Snyderman.

The kind of learned eclecticism that led Joannou to pair his Jeff Koons sculptures with the Perriand table and inspires other buyers to put a Panton lamp across from their John Currin painting represents a new kind of lifestyle fantasy. A limited-edition, hand-painted leopard cabinet by Piero Fornasetti is typical of the design sensibility: globe-trotting, connoisseurial, emblematic of a discerning eye schooled at art biennales and fairs. Looking like a set piece from a 1980s Almodovar film, it sold at Sotheby’s for $31,200, double its low estimate. “There’s such a wealth of material,” said Mr. Zemaitis. “It makes our market hot compared to other furniture periods.”

“Important 20th Century Decorative Art & Design Including Property from the Collection of Dakis Joannou,” at Christie’s June 9 at 10:30 a.m.(20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-636-2240).