Stewart Wurtz  has been building custom furniture in Seattle since 1986, but he got his start on the other side of the country. Living in Maine in the late 1970s, he found a job at the Thos. Moser Company. After looking into various woodworking traditions on a trip to Europe in 1980, Wurtz returned to the United States and enrolled in the storied Program In Artisanry at Boston University, where his teachers included Jere Osgood and Alphonse Mattia.