History of Soap

A soap-making facility was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii.

Even earlier, soap was referenced in Sumerian tablets from about 2500 B.C., which spoke of washing wool in soap, and described making soap from water, cassia oil and alkali.

In ancientEgypt, those who could afford to do so bathed and presumably did so with soap.

But the Romans, of course, were the ones who made bathing famous with their ornate public baths, and they spread their bathing custom (and soap) across the territories they conquered. With the fall of Rome came a decline in many things, including bathing, and soapmaking across Europe appears to have been all but abandoned during the Dark Ages, as far as historians can tell us.

Soap-makers guilds appeared in the 7th Century acrossEurope, and the whole process became a closely guarded trade secret.

Commercial soap production seems to have sprouted inItaly in the 8th century A.D., and spread toFrance (Marseilles) by the 12th century. By the 14th century soap appeared again inEngland.

A pamphlet in theBritish Museum (printed in 1641) is entitled "A Short Account of the Soap Business." It details a duty which had been levied upon the making of soap for the first time that year, and describes patents which were issued for the manufacture of white soap (although it seems unlikely that this was actually a new invention at the time). The chief thing to be learned by this pamphlet, however, is that soap making was a thriving industry inEngland by that date.

From 1712 to 1853 a heavy tax was issued on soapmaking inEngland -- a tax so burdensome that it drove many soapmakers out of the country in order to earn their livelihood. Many of them immigrated to the colonies, where the tax could be avoided.

Onerous laws were also in effect during that period to prohibit soap from being made in batches of less than one ton. That kept the soapmaking process firmly in the hands of those capitalists wealthy enough to afford larger manufacturing facilities, and out of the hands of the small soapmakers.

This gave a decided advantage to the soap-makers of the Continent, who laboured under no similar constrictions.

Nicholas Leblanc, a French chemist, patented a process for making alkali from regular salt (sodium chloride) in 1791. His process, for the first time, allowed the cheap manufacture of the soda ash used in soapmaking.

After the repeal of the English soap tax in 1853 the English soap trade boomed. Further advances in the science led to truly inexpensive soap, affordable for the common man. For the first time, soap became both popular and available in great quantities. Commercial pressures demanded that soap-makers specialize: the division of soaps into soaps for the bath, laundry soaps, and soaps for general cleaning purposes became commonplace.

During the late 19th and most of the 20th century, mass-marketed soaps were the order of the day. Lever Brothers and Colgate-Palmolive became giants of the industry, selling millions of pounds of soap (a DAY!). Starting in about 1970, however, coincident with and part of the movement toward a more "natural" lifestyle, handcrafted soapmakers were able to compete successfully against the larger mass-production soap companies even though, by their nature, handcrafted soaps will always be more expensive than soaps turned out in a continuous process involving batches of a million pounds or more of soap.

"Natural" handcrafted soaps are firmly back in the market, and many books have been published in the last 30 years about how to make excellent handcrafted soaps with qualities sought after by the educated consumer looking for a more natural product with which to wash. Handcrafted soaps are, generally speaking, less harsh on the skin than commercially prepared soaps. Also generally speaking, they are gentler and less drying. Although there is much variation from the products of one handcrafted soapmaker to another, it can still be said that if you want a fine, gentle, natural soap -- not one made with fillers and detergents -- then you are in the market for handcrafted soap.

Modern chemistry enables handcrafted soapmakers to turn out small batches of perfectly blended soaps, knowing that their products will not be excessively alkaline or excessively oily.

To determine if a soap is truly handcrafted, ask the maker if it is made from scratch (from oils and alkali) or if it is "melt-and-pour". If it is handcrafted and made from scratch, you can expect to pay three to four times the price of a bar of commercially made soap -- and you can expect to enjoy it immeasurably more.

Once you've made the switch from commercial to handcrafted soaps and enjoyed the benefits you can expect only from a fine handcrafted soap, you'll look with disdain upon the row upon row of cheap, smelly soaps in supermarkets and you'll see how far down the primrose path commercial soapmakers have strayed. Their humble roots are forgotten in the quest to make ever cheaper and more harsh the soaps they sell.