Who started carving soap?

Carving soap is good, clean, and fun! Every year my pup scouts hoped to learn how to carve with a knife safely. They learned to carve using a bar of soap. It quickly became apparent that soap carving requires some talent.

Who started carving soap? Why would anyone want to carve it when everything washes away? Can it be considered art?

The first hand-carved flowers came from the Chian Rai village in northern Thailand. Villagers carved them in the evenings as a hobby. Later they started selling the carved flowers at the evening bazaar along with other handmade items. Soap carving became a profitable hobby.

As more people wanted carved soaps, others began to try carving. To carve it, the soap-making process must provide one that is firm, but soft enough to carve without flaking or breaking. All carving projects should start with good soap making.

Given that it seems to be such a temporary medium (we did throw it down the drain after all), can it really be considered a work of art? Soap art is usually done on a miniature scale, limited by the size of the bar of soap. Some soap art has been created by using larger blocks of soap to create larger sculptures.

Bev Kirk made the world’s largest soap sculpture for the Ivory soap manufacturing company. He created a winged pig which he titled “Sudsie, a soap boar”. This large sculpture was cut from a 5 foot by 5 foot by 6 foot bar, and the finished sculpture weighed 7,000 pounds!

I remember my mom having cute soap flowers by the sink in the guest bathroom. These flowers were so pretty that we couldn’t use them. She considered these soap flowers to be works of art worthy of display.

None of the soap carvings my scout pups made would be considered great art. We still have a lot of fun making them clean. Hopefully, the kids also had some clean fun using their creations during bath time.