The OGs of Skincare

Olive oil and laurel oil, poured into a shallow bed to set, then cut into blocks, stamped, and stacked to dry for months. That long dry is what gives the bar two colours — gold on the outside, green where you cut into it.

UNESCO added the craft to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2024.

Three things and nothing else: olive oil, water, and an alkali. It is cooked for days, poured out to set, then cut and built into tall ventilated towers so air reaches every face of every bar.

Also inscribed by UNESCO in 2024.

Ash from roasted cocoa pods and plantain skins, cooked together with palm kernel oil and often shea butter.

The name undersells it slightly. It comes out a deep earthy brown rather than black, and it is softer and more textured than a pressed bar.

Named after the Kingdom of Castile. Seville's Royal Soap Works made soap from olive oil using ash from salt-marsh plants.

The name travelled further than the place. Today "castile" describes the method more than the origin — plant oil rather than animal fat — which is why you will find it made in Vermont and in Alberta as readily as in Spain.

A royal edict of 1688 set the rules for what could carry the name: pure olive oil, and no animal fat.

The "72%" stamped into the side of the cube came later, in 1906, marking the proportion of oil in the bar. Both makers here still stamp it.

Writing nearly two thousand years ago, Pliny the Elder called soap an invention of the Gauls, made from tallow and ash.

It is the one on this page made with animal fat rather than plant oil, and it lathers more readily than any of the olive oil bars — which is a large part of why it stayed the standard for so long.