TOC Aromatherapy Shaving Soap

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I mentioned this soap in a shave of the day recently, and thought I'd share my enthusiasm in a proper review.

Up until last Sunday, I only knew this as "the light blue soap that I got from a chap at the farmers market in Settle two years ago who I haven't seen since", which is a bit cumbersome, but, lo and behold, he was there again so I bought another cake and picked up a brochure. Contact details:

TOC Aromatherapy by Maggi Dearmer
(Peartree, Holmside Lane, Durham DH7 0DY)
(Tel: 0191 371 9167)
(email: <!-- e --><a href="mailto:mdearmer@btinternet.com">mdearmer@btinternet.com</a><!-- e -->)

and here's a list of the farmers' markets:

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On the stall were a couple of dozen soaps of varying colours and degrees of opacity, but it's likely that all the non-shaving soaps are glycerin based. There's just the one shaving soap, which costs £6.95 for 180g which seems quite reasonable, or £12 in a shallow pottery bowl. The latter didn't appeal much to me, and besides, the ordinary cake happens to fit very nicely into an old Taylor's cream tub or a Tabac bowl.

The ingredients list is rather unusual and wholesome sounding:
"Spring Water, Goats Milk, Honey, Evening Primrose Oil, Macadamia Oil, Blackseed Oil, Shea Butter, Sodium Olivate, Vitamin E, Aloe Vera Gel, Sandalwood, Frankincense, Fennel, Bergamot, Bay, Tea Tree, Petitgrain, Lime".
The scent certainly meets with my approval, and, more importantly, my wife's: it's very clean and fresh, but subtle, and doesn't interfere with any aftershaves or colognes if I feel so inclined (incidentally, there is also a balm available, apparently). I utterly loath the smell of goats milk, and am pleased to report that I can detect no trace of it.

My other favoured soaps are Tabac and Palmolive whose exceptional lathering properties are well known, and yet the vegetarian TOC soap gives nothing away to them. It's as easy to knock up plenty of lather with this as it is with Tabac, and it's good stuff: cushioning, protective and very long lasting. Talking of which, I'm not yet halfway through the first cake despite regular and generous use, so longevity is good.

This soap is a confirmed favourite of mine, and I'm hoping that maybe one of my fellow northerners will come across it at a market, take a fancy to the scent and give it a go.
 
Let me describe "Peartree" a little... It's 3 (possibly 4) late Victorian terraced houses and I think 2 "modern" (1960s?) semis in the middle of nowhere (Peartree is properly called "Peartree Terrace") - about 500 yards from what used to be a cracking pub (the Wardle's Bridge Inn) that used to have about 130 different whiskies behind the bar.... now it's one of those pubs you go to with the wife (of a close friend) if you get what I mean... if there are 30 cars in the car park there will be exactly 30 people in the pub.

Doesn't surprise me that they do no promotion - they're probably making all the soap by hand in the kitchen and need time to make the tea with the sales they already have.
 
Andy very generously sent me a block of this badboy, and I have to chip in a little review - it's great. Personally, I dig the scent a lot, very fresh and clean. The puck smells slightly minty, but it doesn't translate to the lather, so you're left with a nice crisp fougere fragrance. It lathers like an absolute trooper - easily as good as Mama Bears soap, and better (could never get them to "work") than Honeybee Spa. Like most veggie soaps, it's very slick and it's nicely moisturising which is probably good for those who get dry skin in the winter. As is my experience with glycerine and veg soaps, I got my best results with a boar brush, as opposed to a badger, but a stiff badger will probably work wonders, too. I am ever so slightly Shea Butter sensitive, but it's in relatively small quantities here so I got very little irritation even on a 3 pass shave.

All in all, a great Homegrown shave soap and well worth picking up a puck if you enjoy British made products, have dry skin and don't want to go down the MWF route (my face hates lanolin). Price point seems very good, too.

Thanks again, Andy!
 
Andy also generously sent me a slice of this, which arrived today. Obviously I am somewhat at a disadvantage in reviewing it's shaving performance. However, I did the now famous tile test with TOC and my latest improved recipe (unveiled only last night), and in my completely unbiased opinion ;) would say that mine compares nearly as well in terms of stability, and better in terms of cushioning. Although only a proper shave could probably test it for sure.
As for the smell....I may be wrong, but it screamed 'fragrance oil' to me. I didn't like it, and thought it way too strong.
I am seriously confused by the ingredients list....Dr. Henk, if you're out there tell us whether you would expect this to make a good shaving soap??? Because I wouldn't. I would expect this to make a soft bar with a very poor lather, and I've no idea why anyone would use such expensive oils in a soap when the oils used (apart from shea butter) would be expected to detract from performance.
And more honey than oil?? Surely that's not possible??
 
That's what I though too, when I saw this ingredient list. In fact, assuming that this ingredient list were according to the requirements in the cosmetics directive (which I was just now rereading ;-) ) it should even function as a normal soap either, with water, milk, honey AND four oils listed before the sodium olivate and no mention of additional sodium or potassium hydroxide. If this ingredient list were correct, what little soap is in there would not even be enough to solubilize all those oils. (Note: even if these were the only 8 ingredients, and they were all present in equal amounts (best case for sodium olivate), there would only be 12.5% soap in this concoction and 50% oils...).

So my well educated guess is that the ingredient list is most certainly wrong in order, possibly wrong in content (maybe those oils were saponified also), and if this lathers as well as y'all say, probably wrong in actual ingredients too.

Oh, BTW, a heavy scent can be produced with essential oils too, no problem... I don't think that in a soap, it would be possible to distinguish between EOs and FOs (unless one uses FOs that are clearly non-existent as EO of course).

Henk
 
P.S. I know you can get a strong scent with E.O.s.....so if these really are E.O.s they must have used a shed load....more than 2 hours and a bath later, I can still smell the TOC strongly on my hand. And I have a bad cold tight now.
 
Interesting. Here's another ingredient declaration, from the equivalent hand soap:

"Aqua, Sodium Olivate, Vegetable Glycerine, Cold Pressed Vegetable Oils, Pure Essential Oils, Vegetable Colour". (my italics)

Does that sound plausible to our experts? A prediction of the properties would be interesting, because I haven't opened it yet.
 
Is this a transparent (or translucent) soap? The ingredient list is plausible, but the order suggests a transparent soap or a melt&pour soap. A standard olive oil soap (a 'castille' soap) should not have water listed as a first ingredient, not in an EU label list (since an EU label implies a listing of what's in the soap as it is marketed; a US label has to list the ingredients that go into the soap, in the order that reflects the amounts that go into the soap kettle). And one normally does not add additional glycerin to a castille soap. The cold pressed oils are probably superfat oils, so they should collectively represent not more than ca. 5% of the soap. The pure essential oils would usually make up about 3% of a CP or HP soap (in an industrial milled soap, where the fragrances are added only during milling, it is usually around 1%).

Henk
 
I don't make glycerine soaps nor use sodium oleate, so will rely on Henk here. I don't think the label should just say 'vegetable oils'; WHAT vegetable oils?? I have had customers who are irritated by coconut oil, how could anyone with an allergy or bad reaction to a certain vegetable oil know whether this soap would suit them.
Another point about the labelling on both soaps is that it doesn't list any irritants, which the vast majority of essential oils contain. They are usually listed at the end e.g. limonene, linalool, citral' etc. because they are present in tiny quantities, but again some people may have a bad reaction to some of them, so need to be able to avoid them.
I'm also confused as to how the shaving soap gets that blue/green colour when no colouring agent is listed in the ingredients. What colour is this one?
 
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