Ingredients
Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Castor Oil
Olive oil is a key ingredient in artesian soaps, it deeply moisturizes dry skin, and softens wrinkles. It has both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and can alleviate symptoms of eczema, psoriasis, and acne.
Pomace Olive oil vs. Virgin olive oil
When our great grandparents made soap, they used pomace olive oil, which is the last pressing of olives in the olive oil making process. The first, best pressings garners extra virgin & virgin olive oil which is used for cooking.
We use the expensive stuff
Today, pomace olive oil is typically processed using chemical solvents, usually hexane, which is made from crude oil, and it’s about half the cost of virgin olive oil. We use the more expensive virgin olive oil. The way we look at it is, why use handcrafted soap if you’re going to use cheap ingredients filled with harmful chemicals — if that’s the case, buy a beauty bar.
Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is another key ingredient, it also has natural antibacterial properties, and is a good skin cleanser, washing away dirt and germs.
Our great grandparents used unrefined coconut oil, which turns soap brown and retains a distinctive coconut odor. Today, to eliminate the coconut odor and the brown color, commercial companies use coconut oil refined by chemical solvents, usually hexane. We use coconut oil refined by steam, and you guessed it, it’s expensive, more expensive than the hexane refined coconut oil; we just don’t what that stuff in our skin care products, so we’re willing to pay a little more.
Castor Oil
Castor oil is a great oil to use in soap. It cleanses and creates a rich lather. The essential fatty acids in castor oil help restore the skin’s natural moisture balance, it reduces skin inflammation that causes acne, and it boosts the production of collagen which softens and hydrates skin.
Quality
Today, castor oil is often refined by chemicals like hexane — again in with the hexane. We use organic, cold-pressed castor oil because it’s chemical free. Is it more expensive? Yup. Are we willing to pay more for a quality product to produce a better product? We are!
Lye (sodium hydroxide)
Do not freak out. There is no lye in our soap. We use lye to make soap but lye is not present in the finished product. We use lye to make soap because soap is made with lye and has been for centuries.
A Brief History Of Soap — a happy accident
Soap like so many things was discovered by accident. There are many stories about the discovery of soap but my favorite dates back to 100 BC, and goes like this; washing-woman cleaning togas in the Tiber River at the base of Mount Sapo discovered a clay that cleaned their togas well, they named it sapo clay. It was a mix of ash, and fat from animal sacrifices that had run down the hill with rain water forming a crude soap — to them a goopy substance that, as it turned out was an excellent cleaning agent. It is believed that the name soap comes from the Latin word sapo, named after Mount Sapo. Woman washing togas is my favorite story but it’s not the first story. There is evidence that the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans and Greeks were all making a form of soap around 2800 BC.
Fear No Lye
Lye is an alkali also known as sodium hydroxide. Soap makers, from ancient times to colonial times leached lye from wood, plants, and volcanic ash. The natural chemical reaction that neutralizes lye creates soap is called saponification. Think of it like a cake. Cake ingredients are flour, eggs, sugar, oil, and baking soda. You wouldn’t eat flour, eggs, sugar, oil, or baking soda, but combined and baked you would because it’s cake. Lye, oil and water combined and cured is soap. The as flour, eggs, sugar, oil, and baking soda once cake is no longer flour, eggs, sugar, oil, and baking soda, the lye, oil, and water in soap is no longer lye, oil, and water — fear no lye.
Fresh soap is the best soap…
Fresh bread right out of the oven, meat, veggies especially from the farmers market are the best fresh and so is soap! Fresh soap smells amazing. We use steam distilled essential oils in most of our soap, the fresher the soap the better smell. Most commercial soap makers use phthalates, an industrial chemical solvent associated with liver, lung and reproductive problems, to maintain a long lasting fragrance in soap. Well, that’s just not natural. The more natural a thing the quicker it deteriorates. Soap that is mass produced in giant vats have a shelf life of two to three years, though which good for the profit margins of multi billion dollar corporations, there’s nothing natural about that.
We use phthalate free fragrances which means our fragrances won’t last as long.
1Hexane is used to extract edible oils from seeds and vegetables, as a special-use solvent, and as a cleaning agent. Acute (short-term) inhalation exposure of humans to high levels of hexane causes mild central nervous system (CNS) effects, including dizziness, giddiness, slight nausea, and headache. Chronic (long- term) exposure to hexane in air is associated with polyneuropathy in humans, with numbness in the extremities, muscular weakness, blurred vision, headache, and fatigue observed. Source: www.epa.gov
2Phthalates must be listed among the ingredients on product labels, unless they are added as a part of the “fragrance.” Under current law, they can then simply be labeled “fragrance,” even though they may make up 20% or more of the product.