I am researching and exploring the wide variety of luxurious and often highly scented shaving and toilet soaps favoured by Victorian gentlemen. Rich almond pastes, attar of roses, spices and citron all feature in these recipes which evoke the atmosphere and tastes of the gentleman's dressing room well over a century ago.
I'm seeking funding to allow me to not only fully research and reconstruct a number of these recipes (the findings will eventually form part of a new book which will reflect my current research into the archaeology and history of soap and other cleansers), but I will also be selecting some of the recipes to be updated and have full modern safety and quality assessments carried out on them.
I plan to put this selected range back into small scale production for use by those interested in experiencing the texture and aroma of real soap, carefully made using historic techniques (but to modern quality and safety standards) without any of the modern additives or synthetic fragrances so often seen in today' products.
To that end, I have set up a Crowdfunding bid to try to raise the money necessary to allow me to obtain the reference material and ingredients necessary to test the recipes, and to cover the costs of having the final recipes safety tested by a modern cosmetic chemist- this is a legal requirement for anyone making and selling soap in the UK today and it allows me to be certain that although the recipe may be antique, the quality and safety standards are right up to date.
Please, if you feel able to help me fund this project, you'll find the Crowdfunding page for the project here. Even £1 is helpful, and if I raise more than the sum requested, it will allow me to include even more recipes and sources in the research project. The funding bid is open for 60 days, and I'm hoping to raise £300 in that time.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you'll check back in due course and see how I'm getting on.
