President John Yeates introduced our speaker for the evening Charles Hajdamach, an international expert on glass and Director of Broadfield House Glass Museum.

He gave an illustrated talk entitled "Gold Medals Galore: Stourbridge Glass at the International Exhibitions" which was of great interest to us as of course Stourbridge, our Town is famous for and has been shaped by glass and its manufacture.

For his talk he chose to put a different slant on Stourbridge glass and likened the period starting in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace when the Richardson Brothers won the only Gold Medal for Glass, through the 1870s and 80's as the glass Olympics when the Richardsons and Thomas Webb were winning gold medals on a yearly basis.

David Hickman thanked Charles for his very interesting talk and slides of some beautiful glass.

He pointed out that in 1974 when Charles started work at Broadfield House there were 1,000 exhibits in its collection and when he retired this number had grown to 17,000!

The meeting closed with the President giving details of the next meeting to be held on Thursday March 15 when John Yeates will give the Presidential Address "Freemasonry in Stourbridge from 1733"

Visitors are most welcome.

The Society meets in the Amblecote Room, Stourbridge Library at 7.30pm