Foreword by ANUPAMA KUNDOO. 225 pages with many color and b/w illustrations. Printed in India. 2018. Ahmedabad. With a background in ceramics and architecture from the University of Southern California, potter, teacher and sometimes-architect Ray Meeker co-founded the Golden Bridge Pottery with Deborah Smith in Pondicherry, India, in 1971. This book is primarily a visual journey—a narrative—of technical development, project by project, braided with some personal history and the relevance of the Golden Bridge Pottery as the background and point of stability for all Meeker’s building with fire. Chronologically by process, the author takes us on a journey from concept to finished homes. Students, interns, architects, potters, ceramic artists and others enter the narrative.



The book includes a portfolio of the best of Meeker’s studio ceramics, with some essays that accompanied show catalogs and a foreword by Anupama Kundoo.



“The title ‘Building with Fire’ is meant to underline, first and foremost, a technique where fire is introduced into the construction process, in situ, as ‘cement’ for bonding building elements together permanently and of course to create a water-resistant structure. But ‘building with fire’ is also meant to suggest the passion with which these experiments have been undertaken, the element of risk involved in the process and, just as important, the fire he inspires in others. Though he has stopped firing houses, Ray Meeker is still building with fire—still taking immense risk.”