Brian Bortz
Wood
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Lost Art Woodworks was founded by Brian Bortz. After 18 years in the telecommunications business doing everything from engineering to business development, He made a life-changing decision in 2001 to pursue his passion of designing and building truly distinctive furniture for a living - that's when he started Lost Art Woodworks. Although he has been building furniture for over 15 years, he's found furniture design and creation as a profession to be the most rewarding, inspiring, sometimes frustrating experience, but always filled with the desire that he will leave his children with the example that you can still follow your dreams.
Known for his distinctive use of marquetry and inlay techniques with a hint of the Art Deco era of the 1920s and 30s - he calls his style “Contemporary Art Deco". His “Free-form Marquetry” mixes woods along organic and geometric lines using marquetry techniques for contrast, complement, tone and color. This technique is most evident in his “River Series” of work which represent a topical view of a meandering river (with an occasional island thrown in!) going through the piece. The rivers all start as drawings on plywood which are then free hand cut on a band saw or a scroll saw – no patterns or templates are used so exact duplication of a piece is impossible, resulting in a truly unique piece of furniture. Mated pairs (such as a pair of side tables) are stacked and cut at the same, thus producing the same river pattern. In the past few years he has incorporated shell inlay into the design as an additional detail.