"Irish" Green Soap is Really from Zanesville???

Around this time of year, I am often reminded of a good friend of mine back in graduate school who used to enjoy saying, "I'm Irish, so I cut my soap with a knife." The days of the ubiquitous Irish Spring soap commercials seem to be in the past now, and it's probably for the best: the Irish don't deserve to suffer such stereotyping any more than anyone else does.

Front cover, undated brochure, ca. 1870s. Chromolithography by
"The Calvert Lith. Co. Detroit"

Rear cover of brochure.

But I was delighted, a handful of days ago, to come across this little advertising brochure, probably from the 1870s, that might indicate that the association between Irish folks and green soap in particular is not only a long one, but one that might have arisen, of all places, in Zanesville, Ohio. 

I am always fascinated by the tiniest and most ephemeral of books, and this little single-fold brochure sports fine chromolithographed front and back covers, each with its own share of Irish stereotypes on display. The product, Schultz's Irish Soap, was a laundry soap, marketed by Schultz & Co. of Zanesville, who described themselves as " 'The' Soap Boilers,"--a fine early use of scare quotation marks.

The lengthy advertising text on the interior is filled with superlatives, and it specifically claims that this product was "the first colored Laundry or Family Soap ever produced." Moreover, "One of the reason why articles washed with Irish Soap are whiter than when washed with ordinary soap is that Irish is colored with indigo (and the process of coloring soap with indigo is patented by and belongs solely to Schultz & Co.)." 

Naturally, there were many imitators: "Remember that the market is now flooded with cheap green and blue soaps, all of which are imitations of 'The Great Original Irish.' and you should shun them as you would any other counterfeit." The Irish Spring of the soap-cutting commercials seems a likely descendant, though the Schultz patent must have run out long before. 

But I would never have guessed in a million years that the manufacture of green soap had any claim to have originated in Zanesville, Ohio. 

Etrennes: A New Post for a New Year

Perhaps it is a fool's errand to think that I might turn over a new leaf (a leaf of a book, naturally) and post a bit more frequently in the new year. So here's a little item from my collection, one of those occasions where a single book fits into more than one of my personal collections.

The collections in question are almanacs, a category of collecting that has not been something I intentionally set out to collect, but I've happened to get enough interesting examples that I have had to admit it's a collection. And since the French Etrennes refers to the New Year, it seemed appropriate to show this one off today. Titled Etrennes du Moment ou Almanach des Sans-Culottes (and dated 1793), it is a wonderful artifact from the early years of the French Revolution. I say "scarce": WorldCat seems to show only a handful of copies of this title in institutional collections, and all of them have a Paris imprint. The entries in Grand-Carteret's bibliography also seem to all be Paris editions; the present copy, from Annonay, may well be from an unrecorded edition.

Although it has been damaged by water and has its losses, I also love this book for its use of printer's waste in the binding, another one of my collecting areas. With some difficulty, one can trace this waste to a scarce publication by the printer of the almanac; it seems likely then, that this is the original binding as it left the printer's shop. 

Both humble, unusual, and a survivor: as I hope we all might manage the same after the passing of another year.