Annie Morhauser fell in love with the beauty of glass when she first saw it being blown on the beach over 30 years ago. She graduated from the California College of the Arts with training in a range of glass techniques, but it was developing her own "slumping" process in the '80s that marked the beginning of Annieglass. Annieglass's original tour de force was a piece called "Roman Antique," a plate of thick glass with a widely painted rim of pure gold. She took it to a trade show in 1983 and astounded the country's leading retailers with this entirely new look in dinnerware. Today, "Roman Antique" is an oft-imitated industry icon that is sold at luxury retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Barney's New York, Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdales and has been used at leading hotels and restaurants such as the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, the Four Seasons, the Ritz Carlton, and the Waldorf Astoria. It has also been featured in the private collections of contemporary luminaries such as Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Aguilera and John Grisham. In 2006 the Smithsonian American Art Museum honored Annieglass by selecting two sculptural pieces ("Tiburon" and "Coquina" from the Shell series) as part of its permanent collection.