Jebeili Family Soap makes traditional Ghar soap in Aleppo, using laurel within a family craft passed between generations. Sharabati Aleppo Soap also produces laurel-oil soap, distributing the Aleppo family's products internationally through its own website. Amman's Beauty Secrets for Dead Sea Products offers soaps alongside mineral salts and mud masks, producing its range at a local factory.
What makes great soapmakers & apothecaries?
This plate lists 60 shops in 28 countries. Marseille has the most with 5, followed by Aleppo with 3. Among these shops, 5 sell online, going by their own descriptions.
Ask for the ingredients list: read the full list before buying, especially for sensitive skin or strong fragrance.
Ask how the soap was made: ask whether it is cold-process, hot-process or milled, and how long it was cured.
Ask how to store it: ask how long the bar keeps and how it should be stored once it is opened.
Explore soapmakers & apothecaries
Use the city plates when they appear below, or open any store for its official door and related ORBIS city and craft links.
Soapmakers & Apothecaries · 60 shops, the best first
Ach. Brito has made soap in Portugal since 1887, the house behind the Claus Porto and Confiança brands. Its Chiado shop still sells classic Portuguese soaps and toiletries produced under that same 1887 lineage.
Best for Historic Portuguese soap house.
At the end of the nineteenth century Porto already smelled of soap and perfume at Claus & Schweder, the first soap factory in Portugal. Achilles de Brito joined that firm in 1903 and became a partner in 1908. In 1918 two brothers, Achilles and Affonso de Brito, gave life to Ach. Brito, and the house has made soap in Portugal ever since. The 1920s brought innovation and elegance, with a showing at the first Salão de Outono da Elegância Feminina e das Artes Decorativas in 1928, and the house appeared at the Exposição Colonial Portuguesa of 1934. In 1968 the factory received a visit from the President of the Republic, Américo Tomás. In 2007 Ach. Brito inaugurated modern premises at Fajozes in Vila do Conde, and two years later the Loja da Fábrica opened its doors there, at Rua de Castelões Sul 346. The house marked 100 years of history in 2018. In 2022 Ach. Brito returned to its founding family and is now held by Aquiles de Brito, great-grandson of the founder. The range still turns on soap, from the 1918 collection to technical and perfumed bars, with colognes, solid shampoos and shaving goods alongside, and the packaging is described as a symbol of Portuguese heritage.
The Patounis family has boiled olive-oil soap in the same Corfu Town workshop since 1891, cutting and stamping every bar by hand and curing it on open racks for months. Their soapmaking sits on Greece's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage, and the shop sells green-olive, white-olive and laundry soaps alongside loose soap flakes.
An Aleppo soap-making family producing traditional Ghar (laurel) soap by methods passed down over generations. Their work belongs to the city's long heritage craft of savon d'Alep.
Sharabati e.K. has brought laurel soap made by its families in Aleppo, Syria, to Germany since 2019, selling to retailers and pointing private buyers to its outlets. Bars are graded by laurel oil content from 1 to 40 percent, in hot and cold process versions. The company says its Aleppo soap factory received UNESCO World Heritage Site designation in 1986.
Best for Aleppo laurel-oil soap graded from 1 to 40 percent laurel, via German retail outlets
Sharabati e.K. brings Aleppo soap made by its families in Aleppo, Syria, to Germany and has done so since 2019. The company describes roots in the traditional production of the city's laurel soap, with knowledge passed down through generations. It says its soap factory in Aleppo received UNESCO World Heritage Site designation in 1986. The years from 2019 to 2022 were marked by difficulty, and in 2020 resources went into stabilising production conditions and safeguarding jobs. Bars are graded by laurel oil content, from 1 percent up to 40 percent in the hot process, with a 40 percent bay leaf oil cold process bar alongside. Loofah pads and back scrub belts complete the range. The German company sells to retailers only and directs private buyers to its list of outlets, and part of its profits has gone to social support in crisis regions. Its stated aim is to continue the traditional Aleppo craft and to preserve it as a cultural practice for the generations that follow.
Beauty Secrets for Dead Sea Products runs a factory in Amman turning out more than 150 items, from mud masks and mineral salts to soaps, sunblock and magnesium oil. The company holds ISO 22716 and GMP certification and exports to over 65 countries.
Soleky was founded in Cote d'Ivoire and is based in Abidjan, making pure shea butter and shea soap. Customers who return empty glass containers for recycling receive a 10 percent discount on their next order.
The Zanabili family have made soap in Aleppo since 1842, cooking laurel and olive oil into traditional Ghar soap by the ancestral cold method. That long lineage is why the house carries the name Pearl of Aleppo.
Best for Heritage Aleppo laurel soap (savon d'Alep)
La Cure, run by the Jordan Company for Dead Sea Products in Amman, formulates alcohol- and paraben-free skincare built around Dead Sea minerals. Its shelves hold mud and mineral-salt soaps, exfoliating scrub bars, moisturisers and shampoos, alongside gift bundles.
Trinitae’s family soapmaking roots reach back to the 1930s in Jordan, and the current range builds on that history with Dead Sea mud, mineral salts, soaps, oils, skincare and gift sets. Its soaps include triple-milled formulas made with Dead Sea mud or salt, extending the family’s long-running cosmetics work into a broad body-care assortment.
Best for Dead Sea materials and a family soap-and-skincare tradition
Founded in Alberta, Rocky Mountain Soap Company makes 100% natural, plant-based soaps and skincare. Its Banff Avenue store is among the best known for the maker's handmade bars.
The Camel Soap Factory makes cold-process and milled soaps, creams and balms using camel milk together with Omani frankincense and essential oils. Everything is produced in the UAE, cruelty-free, and sold as skincare and heritage-scented gifting.
Founded in 1997, Edmis makes Edirne's decorative fruit-shaped soaps alongside herbal, loofah and sponge bars from a workshop in the city's industrial district. The catalogue extends to bath bombs, lokum and almond paste, often packaged as gift baskets.
Arifoğlu's shop at No. 31 inside the Mısır Çarşısı, the Spice Bazaar in Eminönü, is one of the family brand's stores. Shelves run through whole and ground spices, blends for meat or fish, a world cuisines series and herbal teas from green tea to mixed herbs. Honey and propolis sit alongside cold-pressed herbal oils. Herbal soaps and food supplements complete a range that runs to several hundred lines.
Best for Turkish spices, herbal teas and natural remedies
Nepal's largest handmade felt products manufacturer, using 100% natural wool from New Zealand that is hand-carded, soap-cleaned and needle-felted with azo-free dyes by women artisans in Kathmandu. ISO 9001:2015 certified, making felt toys, dryer balls and home decor for export.
Founder Halil Amca has made pistachio-oil bıttım soap in Artuklu, Mardin since 1995, continuing a dried-goods trade he entered at age nine. The shop also sells a seven-mixture Special Dibek Coffee and almond sugar.
Best for Seven-mixture Special Dibek Coffee and almond sugar
Halil Amca was born in Mardin in 1959 and started in the dried-goods trade at nine years old, continuing work passed down father to son in the family. The soap that now carries his reputation came later: he began producing bıttım soap, made from pure pistachio oil boiled with additive materials, in 1995, using his own resources and methods rather than an inherited recipe. That soap sits alongside two other regional specialities the shop makes itself, a Special Dibek Coffee sold as a seven-mixture blend, and almond sugar offered in several variations, including a cinnamon version and one marketed under the name ghost almond sugar. The business operates from a single storefront on Mardin's 1. Cadde in the Artuklu district, and pairs that physical shop with an online store promising two-day shipping across Turkey. The company's own materials date the operation to the 1960s, while Halil Amca's personal account places his start in dried goods a decade later, in 1968, before the soap line began in 1995, a gap the business does not reconcile on its own site, but one consistent with a family trade that predates the individually branded soap product it is best known for today.
Founded in Salon-de-Provence in 1900, Marius Fabre cooks genuine savon de Marseille in traditional cauldrons from olive oil. The soap house now runs a dedicated boutique in Arles.
Best for Authentic savon de Marseille and Provencal soaps
Marseille soap factory operating since 1894 in the Aygalades district, maker of the La Corvette brand of traditional savon de Marseille; opened a public soap museum and factory shop in 2018.
Best for Traditional savon de Marseille and household soap from this Marseille factory
Savonnerie du Midi was founded in Marseille in 1894, one of the city's surviving historical soap manufacturers still using the traditional recipe and process for savon de Marseille. The company originally sold three brands - Aubepine, Aigle Blanc and La Corvette - of which only La Corvette, identifiable by its navy-blue sailing-ship logo, is still produced today. Production moved to its current site in the Aygalades district of Marseille's 15th arrondissement in 1970, on a site whose building dates to 1870 and previously operated as a flour mill and then a semolina factory. In 2018, after two years of renovation work, the company opened its industrial site to the public, adding the Marseille Soap Museum and a factory shop.
Goto no Tsubaki presses and refines wild-camellia oil on Fukue Island, where the Gotō archipelago holds Japan's largest stand of naturally growing camellia. The company builds its skincare line — lotions, soaps and yeast-fermented camellia oil — around the island's signature crop.
Best for Camellia (tsubaki) skincare and cosmetics
Naples Soap Company makes natural soaps, shampoo bars and face and body care, sold across multiple Florida retail stores and online. Alongside its direct online shop it offers a store locator and a rewards program for customers.
Authentic Marseille soap in the heart of the Latin Quarter. This boutique sells the 72% olive oil soap in cubes, bars, and liquid form, along with Provence-made fragrances, body care, and house.
Best for 72% olive oil soap in cubes, bars, and liquid form
Porto interiors and lifestyle shop near the Bolhao market, mixing restored vintage furniture with a house line of custom wood pieces, lighting, textiles, ceramics, soaps and personalized bicycles. At Rua Guedes de Azevedo 123/125.
Best for Furniture, lighting, and decorative objects at this independent Porto interiors shop
Mercado Loft Store is an interior-decoration and lifestyle shop in Porto's Baixa district, at Rua Guedes de Azevedo 123/125, near the city's central Bolhao market. The shop doubles as a small architecture-and-design workshop, and its stock spans a deliberately wide range: vintage furniture sourced from various origins and restored for reuse sits alongside contemporary pieces such as tables, chests of drawers, sideboards and armchairs. Beyond furniture, the shop carries lamps, vases, crockery, textiles, notebooks, soaps and perfumes, and even personalized bicycles and hanging plant displays. The shop operates in connection with the design studio umseisum, which lists Mercado Loft Store as one of its projects. Porto city guides consistently frame it as a concept store for the home rather than a single-category retailer, emphasizing curated, one-of-a-kind pieces over mass furniture retail.
Manufaktura is a Czech cosmetics brand whose roots lie in a Prague shop selling local crafts and wooden toys. Its later development into soaps and body care retained an interest in regional ingredients and giftable products. The brand operates several Prague shops, with parts of its traditional craft range remaining distinct from the cosmetics collection.
Best for Czech cosmetics and gifts in Prague
Manufaktura is a cosmetics brand that organises everyday care through product type and ingredient-led collections. Facial care includes serums and creams as well as lip balms and masks. Body products range from soaps and bath salts to shower care. Shampoos and conditioners form a separate hair programme. The named collections keep their Czech-language titles. Pivní kosmetika carries a beer reference, while Růže & Vřídelní sůl names a separate rose-and-spring-salt collection. Vinná kosmetika provides another food-derived line, and the limited Dýně edition brings pumpkin into the seasonal programme. The company also states that it does not test on animals. These facts make Manufaktura more than a general bath-and-body shop. Familiar materials become organising themes for modern cosmetic formats, allowing one ingredient story to move across several forms. The merchant's identity rests on that translation: local cultural references, named ingredient families, and a cruelty-free position applied across skin and body care as well as hair care.
This soap and cosmetics shop in central Saint-Rémy carries more than 320 handcrafted French soaps, from Savon de Marseille to organic olive-oil and donkey-milk bars. Argan-based cosmetics fill out the range.
Best for Savon de Marseille, olive-oil and donkey-milk soaps, argan cosmetics
Rampal Latour makes Marseille soap, body care and natural household products in Salon-de-Provence. Factory knowledge informs practical choices between solid soap, liquid formats and cleaning products for different uses.
Best for Traditional Marseille soap and natural household products from Salon-de-Provence
Tofino Soap Company has hand-crafted natural soap, candles and organic hair care from Vancouver Island botanicals since 2010, keeping packaging under 6% plastic. The brand sells through its own online store and wholesale to boutiques, spas and resorts including the Wickaninnish Inn.
StArt Art Gallery sells paintings, prints, sculpture, woven textiles and digital photography by artists including Lynette Diergaardt, Nicky Marais, Jakobina Gideon and Petrus Amuthenu, working in acrylic yarn, acrylic paint, ink, linoleum block printing and soapstone. Recent featured works include "Shadow Weave" (2023) and "Radio Tower" (2023).
Best for Contemporary Namibian paintings and sculpture
Mwani Zanzibar turns seaweed grown by women farmers along Zanzibar's southeastern tidal flats -- the stretch of coast running through Jambiani, Paje, and Bwejuu where the crop has been cultivated for generations -- into facial cleansers, soaps, and body oils. The company pays its harvesters well above the standard raw-seaweed rate and ships the finished skincare directly from its own site to the US, Canada, and Europe.
Best for Seaweed skincare, direct-trade Zanzibari beauty products
Francesco Guarino opened his workshop in 1990, producing hand-painted maiolica pieces including vases, bomboniere, decorative tiles, and tableware. Styles draw on the historic Antico Savona designs originated by Giovanni Antonio Guidobono, alongside Calligrafico, Levantino, and Floreale patterns.
Best for Hand-painted maiolica vases and tableware
A heritage Taiwanese soap maker whose Dihua Street flagship sells plant- and herb-based soaps. The brand’s smiling-moon soap is part of Taiwanese collective memory; its flagship is at 190 Dihua Street in Taipei.
Best for Plant- and herb-based soaps
Dachun Soap traces its own history to 1923, in Taipei's Dadaocheng district during the period of Japanese colonial rule, when the neighborhood — then a major trading hub along the Tamsui River — supported the kind of small manufacturers the brand descends from. Its smiling-moon soap bar has since become a fixture of everyday Taiwanese life, remembered by generations of households rather than marketed as a novelty. The company later returned deliberately to that regional identity, building a Dadaocheng Time collection around locally sourced rice, tea leaves, Chinese medicinal herbs and ganoderma (lingzhi) mushroom. Since 2018 it has expanded with newer lines — Taiwan Native, Spring Forest, a silicone-free Eastern Treasure hair-bar range, and the Jade Crystal series — alongside perfumes, soy candles, essential-oil blends and household soaps. The flagship storefront sits at No. 190 Dihua Street in Dadaocheng, in a stretch of the street still lined with dried-goods merchants and traditional shophouses; a second, newer Dachun storefront is reported nearby at No. 234 on the same block, though this could not be independently confirmed beyond blog-level sourcing. Beyond its own shops, the brand is carried by more than thirty retail partners across northern, central and southern Taiwan.
De la Irina has hand-poured natural soaps, deodorants and skincare in small batches from Timișoara since 2011, using minimal or unscented formulas free of synthetic additives. Customers order through the online shop, with local pickup available at a Timișoara coffee shop or courier delivery by bike or post.
Graine de Pastel makes skincare, soaps and body products using pastel oil as its signature ingredient. The Toulouse-based range links regional plant history with modern wellness and gift formats.
Best for Toulouse skincare built around pastel oil, plus body care and soaps.
Grandma's Soap House is a new artisan boutique in Phu Quoc selling handmade natural soaps in scents like lemongrass and charcoal, alongside curated Vietnamese souvenirs such as ao dai, non la hats, and bamboo crafts. The shop sits right in front of its sister business, Grandma's Kitchen restaurant, on Tran Hung Dao street.
Best for Handmade Soap, Souvenirs, Vietnamese Crafts
Humphreys Hill House is a boutique hotel off the Kisii-Keroka road, 2.5 km from Kisii town, whose grounds display over 40 original Gusii soapstone sculptures made by master craftsmen. Its gift shop sells carvings, textiles and curated cultural artefacts alongside the property's 25 rooms.
Island Craft started around in 1943 and its been going for 76 years. It’s the second oldest company in the Cook Islands still existing. Island Craft is famous for producing local products; 21st keys, trophies, shell carvings, cooked coconut soaps and engravings/modern technology. Island Craft is well known for creating unique keys for local and overseas customers.
Kisii Soap Stone Carvers Co-Operative Society (KISCOOP) was formed in 1980 by 69 stone carvers in Tabaka, Kisii. Its Facebook page displays photo albums of carvings made by member artisans.
Established in 2002, this family farm in East Marion grows more than 80,000 lavender plants across a seventeen-acre field, with a later thirty-acre expansion in Calverton. The farm shop stocks essential oils, pillow mists, soaps, candles, sachets, and lavender honey made from the harvest.
Best for Walking the lavender fields and farm-made goods
Manifattura Giuseppe Mazzotti 1903 was founded in 1903 by Giuseppe Bausin Mazzotti and continues entirely manual ceramic processing in the Bianco e Blu and Antico Savona styles. Leadership passed through Torido, Giuseppe Bepi, and Tullio Mazzotti, and the Fondazione Giuseppe Mazzotti 1903 was established in 2002.
Best for Hand-crafted bianco e blu ceramics since 1903
An organic lavender farm on San Juan Island that grows and distills its own crop into culinary, bath and body products crafted on the property. A downtown Friday Harbor store carries the full line alongside the summer farm visits.
Best for Organic San Juan Island lavender distilled into culinary, bath, and body products
This West Street shop has sold organic soap and handmade beauty essentials in glass bottles for more than 25 years, a packaging choice the company keeps for its lower environmental footprint. Bath bombs, skincare and curated gift boxes are made by the business itself rather than sourced from a wholesaler.
Best for Organic handmade soap and bath products
Quintessentially English was established in Lacock in 1997 and trades from a historic apothecary at 11 West Street in the National Trust village in Wiltshire. Founder Jacqui Sheard describes her studio as a place where sculpture meets the art of the apothecary. Small-batch soaps and lotions as well as body oils and bath products are made with botanical ingredients and essential oils. Every item is hand finished and wrapped. Candles and reed diffusers are hand poured by Jacqui, Holly and David from plant-based waxes and pure essential oils. The shelves also hold design-led homeware and vintage finds, together with locally made crafts and the shop's own Q Range of mugs and cards and tea towels featuring English wildlife. At the rear of the store David runs a micro-distillery where Lacock Gin is made in small batches. Up a small flight of stairs, the Q Gallery shows Jacqui Sheard's original sculptures and hand-painted ceramics. Occasionally the work of other artists hangs there too. In 2018, after years as a graphic designer and founder of the business, Sheard returned to sculpture and to working directly with raw materials. Organic soap-making workshops run in the Lacock studio, where visitors learn traditional techniques and take home a batch of their own.
Saltspring Soapworks has made natural skincare products since 1979, beginning with an artisanal soap bar that grew into a four-generation family legacy. The company's liquid soaps are made with all-natural, sulphate-free ingredients.
This family business began in late 2005, adapting traditional Thai herbal remedies into soaps, serums, and body oils built around cold-pressed virgin coconut oil. The factory and retail shop are based in Bo Phut, where the coconut-processing line sits alongside the storefront.
The Bertaud family left industrial jobs to found this soap workshop, registered and based in La Rochelle, making cold-process bars sold under their own Bertaud name. Their own site recounts the shift from factory work to small-batch soapmaking that started the business.
Spa Ceylon's Old Dutch Hospital flagship spreads across two floors of the restored colonial hospital, pairing a boutique of Ayurvedic oils, soaps, bath rituals, home aromas and organic teas with a full urban spa. The homegrown Sri Lankan Ayurveda house builds its formulae around local botanicals such as cardamom, cinnamon and sandalwood, running signature treatments across a dozen guest rooms at this location.
Best for Ayurvedic bath and body products, spa treatments, herbal-infused gifts
Starfish Oils has hand-mixed soaps, bath salts, and body oils in Kingston since 1996, working out of a studio near Bob Marley's old Tuff Gong recording rooms. The brand keeps a permanent counter inside Devon House alongside its own storefronts and ships its island-scented lines abroad.
This family-run maker hand-produces soaps, shampoo bars, and cosmetics in small batches in Oxford, with a stall in the Covered Market on Market Street. Its products and making workshops are sold through an online store, with a focus on zero-waste bars.
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