Читать книгу Complete Guide to Soap Carving - Janet Bolyard - Страница 9

INTRODUCTION:

WHY CARVE SOAP?

Because it’s a lot of FUN! Soap carving gives you an easy way to create sculptures of all sizes using only common bar soap you can get at any store.

For people with a general interest in carving, especially, it’s a great point of entry: starting with inexpensive soap and creating your own tools out of upcycled materials is an economical way of finding out if you like carving enough to graduate to knives, gouges, and wood.

Carving soap gives you a way to show your creative side. Who knows, your finished carvings may be good enough to use as centerpieces! If they’re really special, your soap sculptures can become family heirlooms. And what’s better than handcrafting a personalized gift for someone, for a housewarming or a bridal or baby shower, or any occasion, really!

Soap carving can be practical, too. You can carry through a particular theme of carvings to personalize your bath, kitchen, mudroom, crafts room—wherever soap comes in handy. It’s also fun to fancy up your bars of soap with holiday symbols: Halloween with ghosts and vampires, Christmas with Santas and snowmen, and Valentine’s Day with hearts, to put a touch of love in the soap dish.

My hope is that you like soap carving as much as I do (which is A LOT, obviously).

WAY BACK WITH SOAP

ca. 2800 BC: Babylonians mix boiling vegetable and animal fats with wood ashes to make the first soap-like substance. They later write their recipes on clay tablets.

ca. 1550 BC: The Ebers Papyrus, one of the world’s earliest medical documents, recommends the use of fats plus salts—basic soap—to New Kingdom Egyptians for keeping clean and for remedying skin ailments.

2nd century AD: Philosopher and physician Galen, writing from the Roman Empire, describes a number of different soaps made by different local cultures out of the tallow (fat) of cattle, sheep, or goats, wood ashes, and lye. The high-fat soap made by the German tribes at the time, he wrote, was the best.

SOAP CARVING’S INDUSTRIAL ROOTS

The art of soap carving was born with a marketing campaign. In 1923, Ivory soap manufacturer Procter & Gamble asked public relations pioneer Edward Bernays (1891–1995) to help them fix a problem. The execs told him:

“Children hate soap because their mothers wash their faces with soap. The soap gets into their eyes, and they detest it, and obviously if they detest it as children, they’ll detest soap when they grow up. What can you do about that?”

—EDWARD BERNAYS, SPEAKING IN A VIDEO CLIP POSTED BY THE MUSEUM OF PUBLIC RELATIONS (HTTPS://VIMEO.COM/MUSEUMOFPR)

Bernays’s solution: the National Soap Sculpture Competition. And it worked—fantastically. In just a year, more than 20 million kids across the country were carving bars of Procter & Gamble’s Ivory brand of soap, even at school. Finalist projects were exhibited in New York City, where they were judged by professional architects and artists. Before long the contest was expanded to allow adults to participate, too.

However, Bernays got the idea of carving soap from someone else . . . Turn to here to find out who it was!

You’ll find that besides being a great pastime, soap carving sharpens your detailing skills. And if you keep at it and get involved in the carving community, you’ll meet a lot of great people along the way—I know I did!

All of the skills and techniques you learn from soap carving are ones you can take with you when you move on to other carving media—wood, stone, or even fruits and vegetables. Here’s an example: I’ve started a family tradition where I carve faces on carrots for our family barbecues; when the carrots are grilled, they shrivel up and look like old wood spirits. We get a kick out of watching them change. They taste good, too!

Whichever direction you take your carving, it makes for great memories and heirlooms, and brings friends and family together even amid busy schedules.

Kids Love It

Ten years ago when I lived in northern California, I was blessed to be part of the Tri-Valley Wood Carving Club. They had a soap carving program to teach kids how to carve. We couldn’t make soap carving kits fast enough; at every event the club’s soap carving tables were crowded with both kids and adults. Such fond memories! When my husband and I moved back to Arizona and I joined both the Arizona Woodcarvers Association and the Grand Canyon Woodcarving Club, I brought the idea for the youth soap carving program with me. I love seeing kids’ imaginations come alive when they create their first projects out of soap, just like mine did, back in school.

Carving bars of soap with wooden tools made from Popsicle or ice cream bar sticks gives kids a safe alternative to knives and wood. It’s a good activity, too. For instance, carving a name train for a bedroom or bathroom is a great way to learn how to use tools at the same time as practicing the ABCs! And making soap boats that float in the bathtub is a great way to entertain kids and make bath time more fun at the same time.

As soap carving becomes more and more popular, I would like to challenge carving clubs to initiate their own soap carving programs for kids of all ages. Having a soap carving category during a club’s annual competition gives young carvers of all levels a chance to show off their work.