Most furniture is drawn by designers. The De Sede DS-142 was drawn by a doctor. Winfried Totzek was an orthopaedic surgeon, sports physician and psychotherapist — a man who spent his days reading the human body — and in the 1980s he brought that clinical eye to the Swiss leather house De Sede. The result was less a chair than a diagnosis: a wing chair engineered around the spine rather than around a sketch.
Totzek's obsession was ergonomics. Where other lounge chairs offer one fixed, flattering pose, the DS-142 gives you several. Its back and armrests move independently, so the sitter can shift from upright reading to near-horizontal rest without ever leaving the frame. Collectors sometimes call it the "Totzek Liege" — part chair, part relaxation system, built to follow the body instead of forcing the body to follow it.
It could only have come from De Sede. Founded in 1965, the Swiss workshop grew out of a saddle-making tradition, and that heritage shows in every panel of thick, hand-worked neck leather. The same craftsmanship runs through the house's other classics — from the architect-designed De Sede RH-304 dining chairs by Robert Haussmann to the DS-142 wing chair itself, where a steel skeleton disappears beneath supple, saddle-grade hide.
What makes a Totzek piece special today is exactly that fusion of medicine and craft. This was not styling for a showroom; it was a working chair, tuned by someone who understood pressure points, posture and the long afternoon. Handle one now and you feel the intention in the mechanism — every hinge placed for a reason.
For the collector, the DS-142 is a rare thing: design as applied science, wrapped in the best leather Switzerland could cut.