TEDDY

Fresh lemon and calm lavender — a combination that cheers up even the half-asleep. Teddy wears it in a caramel-brown face with round ears and an embossed smile, topped with a cream layer poured over it like honey. A vegan design soap for children and adults — 75 grams, just right for a smaller hand — made by the cold process in our workshop in Prievidza.

A soap bear brought to life by a wire

The smile, the eyes and the whiskers are embossed straight into the soap, and we cut every bar by hand with a wire — so no two bears pull quite the same face. One smiles a little wider; on another, the cream layer has settled lower over the ears. Not perfectly identical. And that is the point.

The scent rests on pure lemon and lavender essential oils, with no fragrance blends. It is not a scent that shouts; more one that quietly gets the day going during the morning wash and leaves the bathroom smelling gently, not insistently. Feel free to take a sniff before you use it — we don't mean anything miraculous by that, just a small reminder that a day can start better than with an alarm clock.

Beneath the good-natured looks is a palm-oil-free recipe: coconut and olive oil with cocoa and shea butter, topped up with sunflower and almond oil, calculated for a creamy lather, plus the glycerine that forms on its own during production — we don't buy it in, we leave it there. The caramel tone of the face comes from cocoa powder with mineral pigments. Each bar then cures on the shelf for at least 30 days before it even makes it into a box.

In the children's bathroom it keeps company with the ginger Fox; together they make a pair that gets hands washed without being asked. Between showers, give Teddy a dry spot on a soap dish or in a soap net. If you would like to know how oils and lye actually become soap, our journal spells out what saponification is. And you will find more pieces with no animal ingredients among our soaps for vegans.