Responses to the soap in boxes.

1.
• Sneezy
• Exotic places
• Childhood baths
• Elderly ladies
• Spring breeze


2.
• Hotels
• soaps brought back from France as a present
• when we were kids
• menthol shampoo
• laundry
• yuck
• soapy cucumber
• granny
• lemon sherbet
• toilet duck
• imperial leather

3.
• Caretakers
• Hippy
• Cycle tyres
• Hotel soap
• Industrial
• Lemon
• Family

4.
• Wrights Coal Tar, my father

5.
• Is 10 imperial leather? A soap I would buy my father every Christmas

6.
• School soap
• Cheap soap
• Sandy soap
• Soft soap
• Swimming soap
• Lost soap
• Agreeable soap
• insoluble soap
• grey soap
• floor soap
• soggy soap
• cracked soap
• liquid squeezy soap
• liquid tip-up
• liquid ooze out soap
• fragrant sneeze soap
• multipack regretted soap
•


7.
• kids would never smile and never whiff if soap could clean with just a sniff

8.
• Sunlight (fairy) Doing washing in the river, on a smooth flat stone

9.
• Hospital
• lemongrass/bergamot
• jasmine
• rats will eat soap my friend Kerry will always be found in the soap isle – smelling and opening the lids of shampoos
• musky/patchouli/Indian soap
• bubblegum
• mop buckets and caretakers
• childhood
• soap for washing clothes is great


10.
• The smell of Coal Tar soap reminds me of my grandfather, who used to spend and hour in the bathroom reading or rather looking at porn which he hid inside the cover of the Radio Times.

11.
• Evokes an imaginary Victorian childhood
• Proper soap –clean soap
• Smells that hide

12.
• Fairy Liquid as shampoo
• Lots of squeezy bottles for Blue Peter projects (just in case)
• Roger Gallet soap in Mum’s knicker drawer, hidden pearl
• Never wash with it, it’s a waste of fragrance

13.
• Lemony fragrant squeezy
• Oily
• Super lemony/ disinfectant
• Floral Victorian
• Hotel bath
• Coal Tar – manly
• Herbal medicine
• Fresh lemon woods

14.
• Refreshers
• School floors
• My mum’s bedroom drawer
• Poster paints

15.
Queuing to sniff, I get a whiff
Of Ricketts leather Camay
And Sunlights light
Mild fairy boys
To pears of Castile Lux
And here we trail off cos we lost the soap plot.

16.
• chemically over scented
• pungent
• overwhelming loos and school

17.
• Junior school
• Childhood bath time
• Pot porri
• Gran's
• Bonfire night
• Well to do B&B owner
• Music course near Alton Towers
• Opal fruits
• Herbal bath salts
• Too much soap wont come off in soft water

18.
My young son threw a very expensive soap from the Middle East that his grandma had brought back froma holiday into the garden bushes – it was never found again.

19.
I still remember as a child using “Le Chat” soap. A square block of white soap. I would be frantically washing my hands with this soap until eventually it dissolved to a small lump hiding a glass marble I wanted to get: i.e. “the cats eye”.

20.
Lemon for me every time

soap associations...from the 20th September

Soap is one of the very first manufactured products a baby will come into contact with, and use every day thereafter…………

I have written some of my own soap associations, followed by contributions written by those who attended Artwash on September 20th 2008. everyone was asked to reflect upon and write about any soap associations which came to mind. As some people sniffed the hanging soap boxes for inspiration, some of the contributions are presented as lists relating to particular boxes, mostly describing or trying to identify the hidden smells.

My earliest memories are not of a particular brand, but sensation. Being ‘soaped’ by my mother very systematically and efficiently sliding the bar all over me and rinsing me, leaving me smelling very clean and fresh and ready for bed, and loving that feeling.

Slightly later my memories are Coal Tar soap, lost in the bath and frantic scrambling to try and retrieve it before it became totally soggy and unusable.

I loved turning over a well worn ‘bar’ in my palms and the slipperiness of the sensation. I didn’t like the roughness of a new bar to touch, but I loved unwrapping it for it had a powerfully strong smell which diminished with use.

More well-off friends had rather luxurious soap, the most exotic being Roger Gallet for me. This was bohemian and smelt fantastic and I aspired to owning some. It also came in expensive looking wrapping.

My grandmother used rather dull Imperial Leather which with its pointy ends. Consistent. Every Christmas I went to Boswells and bought her Bronleys lemon soap. Which was a perfect lemon shape and smell, and used to come in wooden boxes.

Maggie says that lots of people attending her G.U clinic (Genitourinary medicine clinics) with undiagnosed rashes ‘down below’, when asked which soap they used, they invariably said Imperial Leather. The doctors were never sure whether this was the source of the problem, or if they gave that brand name because the patient thought it more respectable than the cheap bar that they were ACTUALLY USING.

I always was a bit dismayed by people sticking the left over bits of soap together. It seemed dismal and, doubtless economic.

I remember one bar I had that had oats or something in it, and was a bit gritty and so scrubbed and soaped all in one. That was exciting.

In France we used huge, unwieldy blocks of Marseille soap to wash the laundry, rubbing the clothes against washing boards or on the draining board. It was a pleasure to do as the smell was fantastic, and as the base oil was olive, it was very gentle on the hands. You rarely saw one of those blocks get really small.

As a child on camping holidays, after a poo in the lav, bars of cheap carbolic soap awaited you, covered in pieces of dead grass, by a bowl of cold grey soapy water topped with scum.

Right now I use Pears which combines great smell with lovely semi transparent visual pleasure. My friend's Mum brings me Maja from Spain which smells unbelievably exotic.

September '08

What a great night of written thoughts and sniffs and smells and more.
Matt Black started off the evening with great humour, thoughtfulness and smiles.
Chess then took on the baton with a visual and nasal trip down memory lanes.
Boxes with different soaps were hanging ready to be sniffed -with that the memories came flooding back. Some of these will be shared on the blog later.
Strangely, the different smells of soaps were mainly associated with fathers...
To finish the evening Matt gave us a great performance of his -farsidesque- poem about those all so sweet sheep.