Über Lavender soap is that rare thing: simple, yet luxurious scent that is authentic and as the name implies - as lavenderish as a soap could get. Using a single high quality botanical with its two faces - oil and absolute - renders a more true to nature experience. Rather than just a pale, runny ethereal quality of the essential oil, there is also the lush velvety feel of freshly picked and rubbed lavender buds and elongated leaves. The whole experience of lavender. And bathing with it - or even just rinsing your hands - is not only a cleansing act, but an olfactory experience, immersing the skin in a complex scent and connecting to lavender's heritage as a purifying herb.

Each bar of soap looks beautiful - hand-sliced, it looks like a chunk of fine old cheddar and is beautiful to handle. The soap is made from olive, palm, coconut and castor oils - a firm bar with plentiful lather, and is non-drying to the skin. 



Open Source Soap creates custom soaps from vegetable oils in the cold-process method, scenting them only with pure botanical essences and in fascinating scent combinations. The owner, chemical engineer and soapmaker Schuyler (pronounced "Skyler") Corry, prides himself on disclosing each custom formulas for each batch with the customer, and on the website you will also find some of the house blends and soap recipe that you can try and make yourself (or not...). I personally prefer to leave the process to the expert, and I've handed the task of creating my scented soaps to Open Source Soap. We created Vetiver Racinettes together and plan to make a few more soaps in 2013.