Sunaina Shah talks to Ray Meekar, author and photographer of the book Building with Fire, published by the CEPT University Press. The book is a compilation of Meeker’s best studio ceramics, with some essays that accompanied his show catalogs. The title ‘Building with Fire,’ is meant to underline a technique where fire is introduced into the construction processes as ‘cement’, for bonding building elements together permanently.

Born in New York, Ray Meeker lives and works in Puducherry, India where he founded Golden Bridge Pottery (GBP) with Deborah Smith in 1971. Pottery has remained significant in Meeker’s prolific practice which ranges from modest utilitarian ceramics to monumental sculptural installations and kiln buildings/homes, a result of a fourteen-year experiment in developing fire stabilized mud buildings.