GLASS is amazing, says Andy McConnell. In fact, it's the greatest substance ever created by man.

You'd kind of expect the man known to millions of viewers as the glass expert off Antiques Road Show to say that. But the longer Andy talks, the more you start to agree with him.

He's sitting in a room in his East Sussex home as we talk on the telephone, looking out at the world through first his pair of glasses, and then his window., he explains.

Both are made of glass, of course. Without the lenses used to make glasses, something like 30 per cent of people alive today would be hugely hampered by poor vision, he points out.

And without the glass used to make windows..."Imagine how dark and drab our homes would be. And there would be no lightbulbs. We'd be back with whale blubber and candles!"

He's just getting started on his hymn to the importance of glass. We take it for granted because most of the time we can hardly even see it, and certainly don't notice it, he says.

But without glass there'd be no medicine in the form we understand it (just think of all the test-tubes used to develop chemicals and medicines, and the tubes and syringes used to administer it). There's be no science, either: Galileo wouldn't have observed the moons of Jupiter, and we'd never have peered through microscopes to understand how the world of the very small works. There'd be no cameras so no photography; no screens, so no TVs or smartphones; not even any fibre-optic cables, since they use glass.

The world, in fact, would be utterly different, and very much more benighted. And that's even without getting to the purely decorative uses of glass - which is what Andy is really interested in.

He'll be coming to York next weekend - on Saturday April 1 - to give a series of talks entitled '5,000 Years of Glass' for the York Evening Decorative & Fine Arts Society (YEDFAS).

York Press:

Arab-influenced Venetian goblet, c1475. Sold 8 years ago for £144,000

And it will be exactly what that title suggests - a sprint through 5,000 years of glass making with an expert who really is in love with his subject.

There's no doubt Andy has caught the glass bug. Look him up on Google and you'll see that he has a personal collection of more than 30,000 pieces. And he can talk about glass with all the excitement and passion viewers of the Antiques Road Show have come to expect.

Glass really does have a 5,000-year history, he says.

Glass beads seems to have been first produced in the middle east, in Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt - possibly as a by-product of metal-working. However they first appeared, the decorative value was quickly realised.

One of the greatest artefacts in the history of mankind - Tutankhamun's mask, made about 3,300 years ago - is decorated with glass enamel, Andy says.

But it was when glass-blowing was discovered just over 2000 years ago - again in the middle east - that the potential of glass was really realised.

York Press:

Decorative bottle. Designed by British glassmaker Michael Harris at Mdina Glass, Malta, c1971. Photo: Andy McConnell

We don't know how exactly the discovery was made - it was almost certainly an accident, Andy says. "Somebody found that if you dropped a hollow pipe in a cauldron of molten glass and blew, you ended up with a bubble!"

It didn't take us long to discover that you it was possible to decorate the objects which resulted. A whole new world of beautiful glass artefacts - vases, goblets and containers - suddenly appeared. The technique 'spread around the world like Ebola,' Andy says.

The Romans quickly picked up on it, and glass making spread throughout the Roman Empire.

By the 14th century Murano, in the Venetian lagoon, was famed as a centre of glass-making. Its glass was produced from clear quartz pebbles that were ground into fine clear sand, mixed with soda ash and coloured with natural colouring agents.

York Press:

Decanter & wine glass decorated by James Giles in London, c1765. Photo: Andy McConnell

And by Georgian times, glass-making was also well-established in an increasingly prosperous England. "Talent heads towards the money!" Andy says. In 1674, George Ravenscroft discovered by adding lead oxide to molten glass both improved the appearance of glass and made it easier to melt.

Less than 200 years later Britain pioneered the use of glass as a building material by putting up the Crystal Palace - an exhibition space almost entirely made of glass - for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Today, there is a wonderful legacy of beautiful glass objects from the Georgian and Victorian period, not to mention glass imported from around the world.

It is a legacy that Tony will be celebrating in York next Saturday, in a series of illustrated talks that will cover everything from the dawn of glass-making and the discovery of glass-blowing to the beauty of Georgian and Victorian glass, an appreciation of 20th century Swedish glass - and a session on the appraisal of glass objects.

A day not to be missed by anyone interested in the 'greatest substance created by man'.

  • The 5,000 Years of Glass event runs next Saturday (April 1) from 9.30am-4pm at the De Grey Lecture Theatre at York St John University.

Organised for YEDFAS (the York Evening Decorative & Fine Arts Society) by Sheila Bartlett, the day is open to all. Entry is by ticket only, bought in advance for £25, including refreshments and a light lunch. No tickets will be available on the door.

Tickets from The Pyramid Gallery, 43 Stonegate, or by post by sending a cheque for £25 per ticket (made out to Yedfas) with SAE to Sheila Bartlett, 122 Stockton Lane, YO31 1BX.