Handmade Soap Dewberry

History of Soapmaking:

Soapmakers' guilds began to spring up in Europe during the seventh century. Secrets of the trade were closely guarded. The training and promotion of craftsmen within the trade was highly regulated. Southern European countries, such as Italy, Spain, and France were early production centers for soap as they had an excellent supply of oil from olive trees and barilla ashes, which they used to make lye.

The English began soapcrafting during the twelfth century. Unfortunately, soap was heavily taxed as a luxury item, and so it was only readily available to the rich. In 1853, when the English soap tax was repealed, a boom in the soap trade coincided with a change in the social attitudes toward personal cleanliness.

In Colonial America, soap was made by women producing it out of their homes seasonally. The commercial production of soap did not start until the early 1600's when enterprising soapmakers from England began arriving in the New World.

Scientific advancements that affected the soapmaking trade began with Nicholas Leblanc, a French chemist who patented a process for making an alkali from common salt in 1791. His process allowed for the inexpensive production of soda ash.

In the early 1800s, Michel Chevreul's significant discoveries about the relationship of fats, glycerine, and fatty acids laid the groundwork for the chemistry of soaps and fats.

During the mid-1800s, Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay discovered the ammonia process that improved the methods for extracting soda ash from common salt. This increased the availability and quality of soda ash for soapmaking.

As a result of the scientific achievements, soap became a popular and easy to-obtain commodity. It also began to take on many different identities: soap for bathing, soap for clothing, soap for cleaning.