Tradition can be terribly sticky. a person who starts out as a traditional commercial artisan usually stays on this path for his or her entire life. Once a craftsperson has embarked on this solid path, it is rare that he or she will display whatever it takes to break out of this confining amalgam – consisting, in the best case, of a mixture of solid craftsmanship and backward-looking naive design – into the wider spaces of artistic freedom. There are admittedly exceptions to this rule among the ceramists. The Swiss ceramist Arnold Annen is such an exception – and a stunning exception at that.