Summer Soap Reading - Soap Making History

Summer just seems like the time to journey through old books - and if you're a soapmaker, you'll love these. I've always been fascinated by the history of making soap - not just the renaissance of soap making in the 1970s that Ann Bramson and Sandy Maine ushered in, but the history of soap from the late 19th and early 20th century. I'm fascinated by how far we've come in science...and at how the process is pretty much still the same. These scans of antique soap making books, courtesy of good old Google, will show you hundreds of years of soap making history. I bet you'll discover some things that you never knew about soap making. I'll also bet that you'll find the same soap making spirit in these authors that us modern soap makers share.
Photo Credit: George Marks / Getty Images