Generally, soaps and cosmetic fragrances come from plant-based essential oils, animal-based scents and/or synthetic fragrance oils, and are often a complex blend of many different parts. At Chandler's Soaps we use plant-based essential oils and synthetic fragrance oils, but never use animal-based oils.
It's been our experience that true plant-based essential oils not only have a more rounded scent, they often have healing or aromatherapeutic value that cannot be synthesized in the chemist's laboratory. In addition, we strive toward utilizing the "old-fashioned" methods when possible. In that essential oils (and animal scents) were the only basis for perfumes for thousands of years (until synthetic scents were invented around 1900) their use is more in keeping with our basic philosophy. Therefore many of our soaps are scented with pure essential oils.
On the other hand, there are some wonderful smells that can't be distilled and put in a bottle, and in many cases chemists have been able to synthesize these scents. Nearly all berry and fruit scents (except the citrus fruits), and many light floral scents come from synthetic fragrance oils. In order to offer a wider selection of handmade soaps, we do use fragrance oils in some of our soaps.
Every bar is individually numbered with the bar and batch number and packed with a Certificate of Authenticity that tells you exactly what's in the soap, the bar and batch number and who packed it for you.
