A Day in My Life
Die Herstellung von Qualitätsseife ist eine Kunst — und erfordert harte körperliche Arbeit. WENDY JOHNSON sprach mit einer Seifenmacherin über ihre Arbeit und den Weg zur perfekten Seife.
Meet Fiona Mcbryde, an artisan soap maker from Gloucestershire
My name is Fiona Mcbryde. I’m an artisan soap maker and founder of Soap Folk, which is based in Stroud, Gloucestershire. In the morning, I get up early and make myself a really strong coffee. Then I walk to work if I can, or drive. I like to be the first to arrive, normally at about 7 a.m. I wash the floors and surfaces, turn on the radio and start the soap making.
Soap making is quite high-risk: there are a lot of things that can go wrong. I start by measuring out the oils. It’s hard work and quite messy. I weigh out my hard oils first — coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter — all beautiful oils to work with. I associate each ingredient with a personality, depending on if they’re hard to cut or really slippery. Then I measure out my soft oils, like olive oil, sunflower oil or castor oil. Every soap has a different blend of oils, depending on what we’re trying to achieve: a gentle soap or a bubbly one.
“I associate each ingredient with a personality”
Then I start preparing the lye. Lye is the ingredient that emulsifies oils into soap — and this is the dangerous bit. Lye can burn your skin, so I get fully kitted up in a mask and gloves. You have to make sure to put the lye into the water: if you do it the other way round, you’ll create a volcano! There are horrible fumes, so I stand outside for five minutes.
Now, I’m ready to mix the lye solution with the oils. It’s a slow, rhythmical process, waiting for that moment when you see the two ingredients emulsify. This is when I add my essential oils — and this is the tricky bit, because you have to work quickly. When I see a beautiful soap mixture appear, I pour it into the mould, cover it with blankets and let it sit for about 24 hours. That’s the soap made — and it’s only 9 a.m.!
This is the funny thing about my business: soap making is only a tiny part of it. The rest of the day is spent doing other stuff. Once the soap is made, whoever’s going to be helping me that day arrives and we focus on getting orders out to stockists and online customers. This involves stamping the tablets of soap with our Soap Folk logo, wrapping them in our papers and checking the different requests people have made. It’s a hive of activity for about four hours.
We work quite hard in the morning, so we slow down in the afternoon. This is when the more creative work starts. At the moment, for instance, we’ve been thinking about a new product, a “soap on a rope”. It’s been hard to work out what kind of rope will fit through the hole and what happens if it gets wet. There’s lots of experimenting going on. We also respond to e-mail questions, such as: “Can I use your soap if I’m vegan?”, or “Do you test your soaps on animals?” There’s something about the afternoon that’s a bit more creative and relaxed, and we really enjoy this part of the day.
When I get home in the evening, I normally make a cup of tea and check in on my partner and kids. After supper, what I really like in the summer is to go for a walk. We live on National Trust common land, so I do a lovely quick spin around the commons.
One of my favourite things is going to the cinema, but it’s been trickier since lockdown. So, we maybe watch something on Netflix, and then I try to keep my eyes open for a chapter of a book before drifting off to sleep.