KUFSOAP

In the middle of a never-ending handwashing frenzie during the pandemic, I visited Michel Mansour, a 86 year old soap maker in Koura, Lebanon, to design a series of soaps using his life long expertise, my experimental design approach, his home grown olive oil and a 3000 year old recipe. Developing from two very different individuals into working as one hand, constantly inspiring and learning from each other, we made a series of soaps, sculptures and experiments in the middle of the ongoing Lebanese crisis, to create focus on a dying craft.

Laurel oil soap

Shaped for curious handwashing, these handcarved laurel oil and activated charcoal soaps has a soothing effect on skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis. All the scraps from carving the soaps is used to create new soaps with different patterns and colours. Placed on a ring and a piece of broken marble helps the soap to dry quickly and not going soggy and mishaping quickly.

soap as a sculpting material

By working with soap as a sculpting material rather than something that’s solely meant for handwashing and without being able to ignore the political and social status of Lebanon at a time of constant failing electricity, no running water, a countrywide supply deficit of gas for cars and generators, hyperinflation and daily riots due to years of government corruption, we created a series of soap sculptures, often using rubble from the Beirut blast as stands or cast into the soap as a comment to how the lebanese government has been washing their hands off the Lebanese people for decades.

working with michel

During three weeks working in Michel’s garden shed we craeted a series of soap experiments together. It took some time for Michel’s disbelief in the process to turn into curiosity (and for the experiments to become good) but as he trusted that something interesting could happen, he went all in and started experimenting too and directly using some of our discoveries and new found techniques in his own soaps.