This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Hand Made Soap, Home Products, Natural Bath and Body. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
For hundreds of years skilled craftsman have made handmade soap. Prior to the Industrial Revolution rough cuts of handmade soaps were crafted on a small scale. While today most soap is mass produced, many skilled craftsman continue to pursue their passion for hand crafted soaps, adding a personal touch to their soap and a sense of luxury to our personal hygiene.
The quality of today’s handmade soaps differs from massed produced industrial soap in that, usually, the glycerine is not removed. This leaves a naturally moisturizing soap rather than a detergent. An array of oils and butters are used in the hand crafting process such as olive, coconut, palm, cocoa butter, hemp oil, and shea butter, with each oil providing different qualities. For example, olive oil provides mildness in soap; coconut oil provides lots of lather; and coconut and palm oils provide firmness. It is easy to see how the selection of hand crafted soap has become so vast.
Handcrafted soap is made unique with the additions of essential oils, fragrance oils, botanicals, herbs, oatmeal or other natural additives. Often rosemary essential oil is added as a natural preservative and fragrance. While many of the handcrafted soaps are long lasting hard bars of soap, they remain exceptionally gentle soaps that can be used on sensitive skin. The high natural glycerine content of handmade soap draws moisture to the skin to combat dryness. The high quality handmade soaps crafted today will remain among the mildest of soaps for sensitive skin.
