Great Karma Shop

History of Soap

 (pulled from various internet sources)

Soap - History and Today

Soap is an organic product for cleaning that is made from natural ingredients that may include animal fat called tallow or vegetable fats and liquid oils, like olive, coconut, palm, or even plant fats referred to as butters like cocoa or shea. Soap supposedly got its name from Mount Sapo in Rome. The word sapo, which is Latin for soap, first appeared in Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis. The first soap was made by Babylonians around 2800 B.C. The earliest references to soap making indicates that the Babylonians made soap from fats boiled with ashes left over from their fires, and used the resulting solution to clean wool and cotton in the manufacture of textiles as well as for medicinal purposes for at least 5000 years.

For all the lovely stories of the baths of Ancient Rome, there was no soap. There were cosmetics, oils, essences...but, no soap. The Romans used an implement called a strigil to scrape oil and dirt off of their annointed bodies and presumeably some dirt came off as well, but soap was not widely known or used during the time of the Roman Empire. Some civilizations who did recognize the value of soap as a cleansing agent were the Arabs in the Arabian Desert followed by the Turks who conquered them. It is thought that the Turks probably introduced soap to Europe when they invaded the Byzantine Empire. Throughout history soap has been discovered and used independently in isolated cultures and tribes. Both the Vikings and the Celts made and used soap. It is the Celtic word saipo from whic the modern word soap is derived. (In Italian-sapone, Hungarian-szappan, Turkish-sabun, Spanish-jabon, Dutch-sepo, French-savon). The Celts probably introduced soap to Britian around A.D. 1000.

Around the thirteenth century, Marseilles emerged as the first great center of soap making and remained so throughout the Middle Ages. Genoa, Venice, and Bari in Italy and Castilla in Spain also became epicenters of soap making due to their abundant natural resources for soap making. All had abundand supplies of olive oil and barilla which was a fleshy plant whose ashes were used to make the lye. At the time, this formulation was considered very modern and became the norm for the next four or five centuries.

All of this modernization led to the rise of a merchant class or bourgeoisie and with them came "soap-boiling" guilds and trade associations. The training and advancement of workers was highly regulated. It took years of hard work and dedication for an apprentice to prove him/herself. It was then that they were able to become a journeyman and a joyrneyman master. Because of the time, dedication, and hard work involved in this process, secrets were kept within the trade. Due to the cost at which they were acquired, they were not readily relinquished. To this day, you may find it difficult to get a straight answer out of a soap maker as to just what is in a particular recipe. Soapers are a tight knit group.

At this point in history you would think people would be taking more baths...you would be wrong! Most soap at this point was used for laundering, so they wanted clean clothes to put back on their still stinky bodies.  The ideas people had about bathing were truly laughable!  Some stories from history: 1) Henry the IV instituted the order of the bath 1399, which requested that his noblemen get into a water filled tub at least once in their lives during the ritual of knighthood, 2) Queen Isabella of Spain bragged that she had bathed only twice in her life...the day she was born, and the day she was married - that lucky prince;) 3) Queen Elizabeth was said to have bathed every 3 months...her attendants bragged..."whether she needeth it or no"...now that's class;) 4)Cromwell apparently didn't like people using soap, and so he slapped a heavy tax on it, which set a precedent for everyone who followed him because soap was obviously a "luxury" item.

Both France and England hampered the production of soap through the middle of the nineteenth century by handing out monopolies or levying heavy taxes. This continued even though many innovative discoveries were made in the field of soap making during this time. A chemist named Nicolas Leblanc discovered a way to make lye from common salt. This eventually made soap available to common folk. Unfortunately, in England,every soap pot was watched zealously by tax officers and locked nightly, so that every bar could be taxed by the government. In time, the duty came to equal the cost of making the soap itself, making buying soap nearly cost prohibitive. Finally, in 1852, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gladstone abolished the tax with the proclamation, a "clean nation is a happy nation". Soap soon became readily available to everyone.

By 1815 there had been a number of poor olive oil harvests. Alternative oils were being looked into, and parallel advances in steam navigation made access to alternative oils possible. Both of these situations were responsible for a change in the basic soap formulation from olive oil to a carefully selected blend of fats and oils that are used today.