Art of Soap Making (Harrowsmith Contemporary Primer)

Merilyn Mohr has created a complete introduction to the art of home soapmaking - a craft that appeals both to our sense of economy and to our sense of simple esthetics.

Foreword

I always feel a kind of alchemy at work when a batch of homemade soap is being made, a process that is at once deeply primitive and highly elegant. Unlike commercial soaps of today, a bar of handcrafted soap seems to have a character and richness of its own, and from the strange and streaked concoction my first landlady grated into her washtub to the herbal bar I washed with this morning, handmade soap has never failed to excite me.

Soapmaking cannot help but appeal to one's sense of frugality -- one can make a year's supply of fine quality bars for pennies each -- but beyond the economics, this is a folk art that makes ecological sense. Handmade soap contains nothing you do not add yourself, and the multiple additives that now find their way into both bathing and laundry soaps can happily be avoided.

My own interest in pure homemade soaps eventually led to the formation of a small country soap-making business, which in turn led me deeper into the history and lore of soap and which, finally, helped spawn this book ...

It is my hope that this book will move others to take up the art that has been largely lost, and in the process discover the unique pleasures of handmade soap.

Merilyn Mohr