Clean, simple, straightforward, and honest” may sound like a line from a personal ad, but those are the words David Shearer uses to describe what he looks for in design. Although Mr. Shearer is one of New York’s top contemporary design dealers, he says his true passion is not selling furniture, but spreading knowledge about beautiful things.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Shearer became one of the city’s most influential design purveyors – along with Murray Moss of Moss and Troy Halterman of Troy – with his TriBeCa store and gallery, Totem Design. He introduced New Yorkers to the work of future design stars such as Karim Rashid, Nick Dine, and Marc Newson and aimed to teach the public about good design through a magazine and Web site, as well as artists’ openings and parties. In 2004, however, Mr. Shearer closed Totem, feeling that it had strayed too far from its original educational vision. Now he has opened a new space called MOD – Modern Objects and Design – where he is trying to revive his mission while supporting exciting new designers.

MOD, which Mr. Shearer runs with partners and twins Marivel and Anavel Martinez, is not only a showroom for cutting-edge modern design, but also a place that celebrates the brains behind the fabulous furniture. The spacious and loft-like TriBeCa storefront – a few blocks away from Totem’s old space – doubles as an exhibition space, and its lower level will eventually house public programming events such as movie screenings (Mr. Shearer is also a documentary filmmaker) and symposia. “I’m interested in the design process,” Mr. Shearer said. “It’s the thoughts behind an object that I find really fascinating.”

Although MOD’s clientele mainly consists of interior architects, anybody is welcome to come in to browse or buy. “You need to be able to really see and touch pieces to truly appreciate them,” Mr. Shearer said. The sparsely furnished showroom serves more as a source of inspiration than a lineup of available merchandise, but the striking and innovative pieces on display provide a sense of MOD’s aesthetic. Monica Forster’s “Cloud” is an organic-looking inflatable nylon “room” from Swedish manufacturer Offecct ($5,900). Bjorn Dahlstrom’s sculptural easy chair BD5 for Swedish company CBI is simultaneously playful and modern-looking ($3,070). Eero Koivisto’s “Orbit” sofa, also for Offecct, consists of a number of reconfigurable parts and snakes around in sinuous loops ($12,300 for a six-piece sofa system). Mr. Koivisto’s “DNA Table” can also be configured in a number of different ways, allowing the user to create his own design ($700).

MOD also functions as an agent for a select group of distributors and designers, mainly Swedish. “When we discover someone that we really like, we sometimes end up representing them,” Marivel Martinez said. “And after we have worked with them for a while, we see them pop up in all the magazines.” Mr. Shearer was largely responsible for making contemporary Swedish design fashionable among style-conscious New Yorkers in the 1990s, when he introduced the innovative manufacturer David Design to the American market.

“I love the idea of recognizing good design and promoting it,” he said. “We have very strong relationships with up-and-coming designers. It’s easy to go with someone who’s already famous, but we’re not so interested in that. Good design is good design – no matter who creates it.” Some of MOD’s newest pet designers are the young Danish collective Hay and the emerging British group Modus.

Originally from Minnesota (which could explain his affinity for Nordic styles), Mr. Shearer studied architecture at the University of Minnesota, and he discovered his future calling when he started selling items from his mid-century vintage furniture collection while still in college. In 1985, Mr. Shearer established Geometrie, a Minneapolis gallery dedicated to 20th century design. He came to New York in 1990 to manage Modern Age, a contemporary European design store in Manhattan, before opening Totem in 1997.

Mr. Shearer’s eye for new talent was honed while running Totem, where the Martinezes also worked, from 1997 to 2004. Totem (an acronym for The Objects That Evoke Meaning) quickly became one of the city’s top sources for exciting, contemporary design. Besides bringing new designs from Sweden, Britain, and Italy to the American market, Mr. Shearer also cultivated emerging American talents, helping young designers find manufacturers and producing in-house collections.

“What we do is about objects, but it’s also about people,” he said. “It’s important to us to support brilliant designers that don’t have connections and funding.” However, running a retail venue eventually became too much about numbers and logistics and less about vision.

Mr. Shearer and the Martinez sisters decided to reinvent their business with MOD. “We had lost track of what we originally wanted to do, which was to show really good design,” he said. “Now we can focus on what really matters to us: introducing people to the absolutely best design we can find.”

MOD, 62 Lispenard St., 212-925-5506, www.modobjects.net.