La Toja

Lately I’ve been using Spanish-made La Toja shaving soap. It’s the kind of ordinary old-school soap that is hard to find nowadays on the UK high street, where canned gels and foams predominate. I obtained several sticks of it via ebay earlier in the year. Rather then applying soap directly to my face and lathering in-situ, I usually build up a lather first in a bowl, so I grated and pressed a couple of the sticks into the wooden bowl in the picture (the same one as I used for that purpose before), in which I load the brush before lathering in the white enamelled metal bowl. I had previously used ceramic bowls for lathering, but after dropping and breaking a couple, descided to try this one.

The brush in the picture is a small, inexpensive horsehair one made, also in Spain, under the recently-defunct Vie-Long brand. Horsehair is quite a bit softer then the bristle brushes I typically use, and to my mind is slightly better-suited for lathering creams and softer soaps than the likes of La Toja. I’d intended to whip up an impressive lather for the picture, but I was in a rush and it wasn’t going to plan, hence the mediocre one shown.