Category: History & Trivia
The history of soap and cosmetic making is fascinating. Along with the history, there is so much interesting trivia about all things connected to soap and cosmetic making.
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“Soap” by Martin Gardner
Just look at those hands! Did you actually think That the dirt would come off, my daughter, By wiggling your fingers Around in the sink And slapping the top of the water Just look at your face! Did you really suppose Those smudges would all disappear With a dab at your chin And the tip…
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Proctor & Gamble Out of Soap Operas
As the World Turns, Proctor and Gamble’s last soap opera is going off the air with it’s last episode (the 13,661st!) to air in September. Their other remaining soap opera, Guiding Light, was canceled in April, 2009. That ends their 76 years in the soap opera business.
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Harsh Lye Soap
I am reading a series of books by S. M. Stirling about what happens when civilization as we know it loses electricity, internal combustion, and gunpowder, as the result of an event the author calls “The Change”. In the years after the Change, the inhabitants of the Willamette Valley in Oregon have learned to cope,…
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Clean Hands Week, Sept 20 – 26, 2009
International Clean Hands Week is September 20 – 26, 2009. This is part of a bigger campaign by the Clean Hands Coalition to help people, especially children, understand the importance of handwashing to stay healthy. As Martha would say, “This is a good thing.”
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Soap for Teeth
I was looking through my book of Hall’s Journal of Health (1859), and found an interesting article in the August issue of that year. It piqued my interest, so I did a little research. Here’s the article: Best Tooth Wash On one occasion, a correspondent for a water-cure journal inquired if a statement of ours…
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2009 HSMG Conference
I’m off to the Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild 2009 Conference in Palm Springs bright and early tomorrow morning! Very excited about it – this will probably be our best conference yet.
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Colored and Swirled Soap
Making cold process soap is a combination of art and science. Making swirled soap is particularly tricky. It’s quite a skill to get the colors to swirl in together and still keep them distinct. Every swirled bar is different–not only different from soapmaker to soapmaker, but different from batch to batch and every bar within…
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Grandma’s Lye Soap (1952)
In 1952, soap made it into the hit song parade! Johnny Standly had a mega hit song called “It’s In The Book.” The first part of it is a parody of Little Bo Peep in the form of a Southern Revival sermon, the second part is a song i called “Grandma’s Lye Soap.” I’ve edited…
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Adult Film Star and Ivory Soap
I don’t follow the news much, so I missed the fact that Marilyn Chambers, star of Behind the Green Door, one of the first “main-stream” porn films, died earlier this month. I only found out when it was briefly mentioned in People magazine. What I found interesting was the note that before Marilyn made her…
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More EO blends from 1904
Here are some more EO blends from The Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite. The amounts given in the book are for scenting a soap batch using 50 kilos of oil; I’ve adjusted them down so the amounts shown below are for a soap batch containing 5 kilos (11 pounds) of oil. The…
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Promote the Benefits of Soap and Water
As we all know, washing with soap and water is one of the very best ways to prevent the spread of disease, including colds, flu, and other illnesses. The CDC has long been promoting the benefits of washing with soap and water. But a survey by the The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) and the American…
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EO Blends for Soap from 1904
Back around the turn of the (last) century, synthetic fragrances were just making their debut. Soapmaking manuals and books for the time still gave recipes for scent blending based on essential oils. My Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite lists a number of scent blends for what were “traditional” toilet soaps at the…
