When a painter and a chef try their hands at soapmaking, is it any wonder that the results are beautiful both to see and smell? If you’d approached Emily Hunt’s table at the Nelson Farmer’s Market this summer, you’d probably have been attracted by the striking greens and yellows of her wares and seduced by their scents: delicate lilac, perky grapefruit or earthy sandalwood.
After experimenting along with her friend the chef, Hunt (the painter of the pair) turned soapmaking into a solo business under the name Slippery Hippo, now emblazoned on bar soaps and fetching little tubs of body butters. “I decided I liked the pureness of vegetable-derived glycerin, rather than cold-processed soaps that involve lye and animal fats,” Hunt explains.
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In Emily Hunt’s Slippery Hippo soaps, hue and scent add up to ecstasy. |
The scents of her concoctions derive from essential and fragrance oils. For example, the clean and lovely smell of the ginger lime body butter I tried is, Hunt says, one of her most popular, and when I rubbed it onto my hands I spent a couple of minutes ecstatically sniffing, savoring the total lack of chemical undertone in the scent.
If you want to smell for yourself, catch Hunt at the indoor market at the Rockfish Valley Community Center on December 6, or e-mail her at ekhuntdesign@earthlink.net.—Erika Howsare