Handmade Soap: A Practical Guide to Making Natural Soaps [Hardcover]

Tatyana Hill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1999

In this book you will find the inspiration and know how to make natural yet elegant soaps. This book is a perfect introduction to the art of natural soap making with step by step instructions and photographs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tatyana Hill studied art and design at the University of Syracuse in New York. In 1993 she moved to London where she started an interior design company. Fascinated with natural body care, but unable to find products for her clients that were both aesthetically pleasing and completely natural, she developed a unique range of handmade toiletries herself, using only natural ingredients. Today, her line, Savonnerie, is one of the most popular and sought-after brands of natural soaps and other skincare products in the United Kingdom.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 64 pages
• Publisher: Lorenz Books (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0754801810
• ISBN-13: 978-0754801818
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 8.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #466,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars London Designer Soaps., October 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Handmade Soap: A Practical Guide to Making Natural Soaps (Hardcover)

A very artistic book with 15 vegetable oil-based recipes. No synthetic ingredients are used in these unusual and luxurious cold process soaps. A beautiful, hand-milled seaweed soap is included. Excellent color photographs throughout, with step-by-step instructions for basic soapmaking. Troubleshooting advice is provided, yet this book is not for beginners. None of the projects are inexpensive and all of them are labor-intensive as shown. Familiarity with essential oils is required due to occasional use of potential irritants such as clove, cinnamon and benzoin. However, these recipes are a welcome relief from the humdrum stuff that's normally seen. Any unacceptable additives can easily be changed by experienced soapers. The only other recipe book that doesn't bore me is British as well: "the handmade soap book" by Melinda Coss. Also sold by Amazon.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TheStylish Unique and "Responsible" Soap Book! Bravo!, July 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Handmade Soap: A Practical Guide to Making Natural Soaps (Hardcover)

This is the most unique and interesting book on handmade soap I have read. The recipes are all innovative and original and the pictures are the best. The book also successful in providing helpful step by step how to pictures that none of the other books I have seen provide. Hill's book is a welcome change from the various others that are copies of one another or seem to take one recipe and duplicate it from one page to the next with a few slight changes on sent or colour. The recipes are also 100% natural which I found refreshing. I would also like to refute another review from a soap maker from San Francisco that is more of an attack on the style of soap that Hill produces than a valid criticism. Hill's soap is a specific original style placing emphasis on natural ingredients as well as high emphasis the decorative presentation of the soap. As a soap maker I have produced soap successfully with even more botanical matter than Hill suggests with great skin conditioning results. If soap is dried and cured properly bacteria will not result any more than it would in a basic soap. The comment about clogging up drains from botanical matter is preposterous! Only small amounts of additives (oatmeal for example) come off of a bar of soap with each use and can wash easily down the waste pipes (far greater amounts of solid waste go down our kitchen and toilet waste pipes every day.) Perhaps the Californian just is not used to this innovative style of English soap making? As Hill is in a position as a professional soap maker with her obviously successful soap company Savonnerie that most of us would love to be in, she must be doing something right! BRAVO

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars At least there's a supplier list., November 30, 2001

By 

B. Tackitt (Granbury, Tx USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Handmade Soap: A Practical Guide to Making Natural Soaps (Hardcover)

Handmade Soap by Tatyana Hill
There are three basic soap recipes given in this book and 14 variations. Measurements are in both metric and American Standard.
-Note: while I have not tried any of these variations, some of them do sound interesting.

Ms. Hill has a listing of nine natural colorants, but she does not explain what these colorants will do in a finished soap.

Safety issues are dealt with fairly well, but I personally wouldn't recommend using vinegar to clean lye flakes off of your skin. Rinse well with running water, but using vinegar in a lye flake that is sitting on naked skin will hurt more that the lye bead by itself. Use the vinegar to clean up lye on your counters, not your skin.

In the back of the book there is a short list of suppliers in the UK, USA, and Australia. It is not a big list, but it is a place to start.

Overall, an ok book, but it is a bit lacking in information.