Thread: Martin de Candre's videos and brief history

In the videos you can learn something from Martin de Candre.





for non french speakers:

The video of the french TV channel FR3 is about the Abbey of Fontevraud. This abbey got the farm that is the home of the savonnerie. The farm was put up for sale after the French Revolution and it was bought by one family, the same family has kept the farm until today, and they have made soap using the old method of the eighteenth century. Probably the last soap that uses this method in France. The mother of the current owners began making soap 40 years ago. One of her daughters, Hélène Dauge, is showed in the video preparing soap.

Hélène e's mother met an artisan soap maker that teached her his "savoir faire" and she started making handmade soaps, as do her daughters today.

In the video Hélène tastes the soap paste in the middle of soap saponification to check it, because, as she says, if the paste is spicy in the tongue is because some lye is not neutralized and it has not finished to become soap.

The soap, after pressing (no triple or french milled, only pressing with a simple press machine to give the soap the shape and the logo of Martin de Candre), after that, the soap is dried in wooden containers at least 8 months. The wood absorbs moisture and provides a regular and constant drying to finish the soap. The soap dried is more durable.

The return to natural products have been given a new upgrade. New products such as shaving soap has been very well received among men by the smoothness of its lather.

They recycle all the cuts of soap that are sold in baskets as a pot-pourri.

As always sorry for my bad english and thanks for pay attention