GREEN GROVE

This time Green Grove is not green at all — a thin dark vein winds through the pale soap mass as in white marble. The forest stayed in the scent: cajeput and patchouli give the soap an earthy, woody-spicy scent reminiscent of a walk through a damp forest after rain. It is a handmade men's cold-process soap.

A men's soap a lady will borrow too

We list it as a men's soap, but earthy scents know no rules. Patchouli and cajeput are pure essential oils, no fragrance blend — so the scent is deep, not forced. The recipe is also vegan — no beeswax, no other ingredient of animal origin. Coconut oil takes care of the rich, creamy lather and hardness, shea butter leaves skin supple, while olive and sunflower oils give the lather a gentler character. Every ingredient in the recipe has a role we can name.

Wire-cut, cured on the shelf

We make it by the traditional cold process and leave it to cure on the shelf for at least 30 days — for us, time is part of the recipe, and in that time the soap hardens so that it lasts longer in the shower. The dark vein meanders through the pale soap mass a little differently in every bar, because we marble the soap mass and wire-cut each bar by hand. We admit it on purpose. We leave the glycerine that forms naturally during saponification in the soap, and you will not find palm oil in it.

To make your grove last a long time, let the soap dry out between showers on a soap dish or in a soap saver bag. You will find companions in a different mood among our men's soaps, and in our journal we write, without romanticising, about why handmade soap costs more. In the paper box version, it makes a tasteful gift for a man who values character. To lather is human. So is smelling of the forest.