Production Process
Like Castile soap, the chief ingredients of Nabulsi soap are virgin olive oil, water, and an alkaline sodium compound. The compound is made by mixing the powdered ashes of the barilla plant (qilw) which grows along the banks of the River Jordan with locally supplied lime (sheed). The sodium compound is then is heated with water and the olive oil in large copper vats over fermentation pits. The solution of water and the sodium compound becomes increasingly concentrated in a series of 40 cycles repeated over eight days. During that time, an oar-shaped wooden tool known as a dukshab is used to stir the liquid soap continuously. The liquid soap is then spread in wooden frames to set. After setting, it is cut into the classic cube shape of Nabulsi soap and stamped with the company's trademark seal. The soap cubes then undergo a drying process which can last from three months to a year and involves stacking them in ceiling-high structures resembling cones with hollow centers which allow the air to circulate around the cubes.
The finished product is ivory-colored and has almost no scent. (Perfumes are never used in Nabulsi soap.) Before leaving the factory, the individual cubes which are to be sold locally are wrapped by hand in paper which is waxed on one side. Cubes which are destined for export are left unwrapped and usually dispatched in stiff sacks to protect them from damage.
Read more about this topic: Nabulsi Soap
Famous quotes containing the words production and/or process:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“A designer who is not also a couturier, who hasn’t learned the most refined mysteries of physically creating his models, is like a sculptor who gives his drawings to another man, an artisan, to accomplish. For him the truncated process of creating will always be an interrupted act of love, and his style will bear the shame of it, the impoverishment.”
—Yves Saint Laurent (b. 1936)