The answer to is, in large part, constituted by a personal path - so much so that it constitutes the book's Prologue. I come from a family of makers and my upbringing was largely a series of apprenticeships. On my father's side, I learned all things pragmatic: sailing, fishing, skinning a fish, hunting, building a deer blind, shooting a rifle, and running a business. On my mother's side, I learned all things artmaking and moreover, the possibility of that coupled with intellectual pursuits. They were Methodist pastors, artists, gardeners - average folk in Ohio via Prussia. Among other skills, my grandfather was even a neon sign maker. They lived among paintings, art supplies, and weathered books in German script and ancient Greek. And that brings me to the turning point of the Prologue. As I describe there, this life of making and material did not converge with my academic pursuits until 2003. Intent on earning a PhD in Sociology, I was enrolled in a graduate seminar called “The Sociology of Museums” at the New School for Social Research in New York City. When discussing semester projects, one student said, “Detroit artists.” After class, I approached him, explaining that my great-grandfather had been a Detroit artist. At the beginning of the following class, he slid a postcard printed with three still-lifes of flowers across the table to me. I immediately recognized my great-grandfather's work, assuming the postcard was from the mid-twentieth century when he lived. But when I turned it over, I read: Fred Papsdorf, American Magic Realist, Opening Reception, Friday, December 5, 2003, 5-8 pm. Stunned would be an understatement of what I felt. He worked a 9-5 gig checking milk bottles in a factory and painting at home in the evenings against his wife's wishes. Seeing the contemporary life of his work spoke to the power of craft to build worlds. It called on me to return to my passion for materiality and making. I commenced a comparative ethnography of craft the following semester, including pottery, weaving, and glassblowing. Fire Craft is testimony to what happened next. I also want to credit the place where I grew up: the shore of Lake Huron in northern Michigan. I woke up every day to her sea-sky horizon and all that both extended toward it and with which it was entwined: waves, ice, moonlight, sunset, fish, the boats receding perspectivally. If an elementally-thick horizon doesn't call you on a quest, I don't know what does. She’s perhaps the Ur-mother of Fire Craft. I’m a first-generation college student, but I think I've been a new materialist since birth, long before discovering Karan Barad’s work in 2016.