Soap

This is a scheduled post.  Again, thank you for visiting, even though I have no way to reciprocate right now.  If all goes as planned, I should be home late Sunday night and will be by after that to visit those of you who have dropped by my blog the past several days.

It's time to once again join Erika aka BioArtGal who is hosting Art Journal Journey this month with her theme Vintage or Modern.

I had never heard of Pears soap until I found a sheet of the ads in my stash.  Pears soap is the oldest continuously existing brand in the world, first registering its ingredients in 1789.  Up until recently, it has always had very few ingredients and if you find the old bars, it is hypo-allergenic. 

Pears transparent soap is a brand of soap first produced and sold in 1807 by Andrew Pears at a factory just off Oxford Street in London, England. It was the world's first mass-marketed transparent soap. 

It is sold as a transparent glycerine facial soap.

According to Our Everyday Life:

Founded by Andrew Pears in 1789, the Pears company produces a transparent scented soap bar composed of glycerin and natural oils. Pears soap is known for its old-fashioned composition--which hasn’t changed much since the Victorian age--and characteristic oval-shaped, amber-hued appearance.

Pears was acquired by Lever Brothers, now Unilever, in 1917 and products under the Pears brand are currently sold in India, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria.

The original Pears soap, which consisted of small batches, was made much like handmade soap.  The drying time was 13 weeks which caused the soap to become naturally concave in the center.

According to the blog Beautiful With Brains:

But what is it that makes Pears Soap so special and who invented it? Pears Soap was created by Andrew Pears, a Cornish barber. In 1789, he opened a store in Soho, London, and started making creams, powders and other beauty products. Because Soho was a rich residential area, a lot of his clients were wealthy women who used concoctions with lead and arsenic to give their skin that fair, alabaster complexion that was so fashionable at the time. Pears noticed that these socialites used his products to cover the damage and dryness caused both by these toxic substances and the harsher soaps of the time.

Further:

So, he decided to create something that would be gentler for the skin and, after some experiments, Pears Soap was born. It was made with glycerin and natural oils, had a scent reminiscent of that of an English garden and a transparent appearance that set it apart from its competitors. However, Pears was more interested in quality that quantity and so he sold his soap only to an exclusive customer base. The business grew and prospered, the shop moved to Oxford and Pears won the prize medal for soap at the Great Exhibition in 1851.

I started this page by gluing a page from an old telephone book to 110 lb cardstock.  I then misted it with my handmade shimmering mist.  All of the Pears Soap ads were on a single page found in my stash.  I cut them with scissors, then colored them with water soluble crayons.  After adding the ads to the background, I added the washi tape.

Bleubeard and I are truly delighted you chose to join us today and hope to also see you at Art Journal Journey. 

We are also joining Art Every Day Month (AEDM) for Day 18, and Bleubeard and I created a journal page.