If you’ve ever looked closely at the ingredient list on one of our Botanical Soaps, you may have noticed that I have a bit of a thing for clay. French green clay, kaolin, marine glacial clay, and one I find myself coming back to again and again: rhassoul clay.

It might seem like an unusual thing to put into soap, but clay has been used as part of bathing and cleansing rituals for centuries. For me, it’s also one of those ingredients that just makes sense in a handmade bar. It contributes to the colour, texture, lather and overall feel of the soap, while doing something useful at the same time. There’s no need for it to make a dozen wild promises. It earns its place in the recipe, and that’s exactly the kind of ingredient I like working with.

So, what is rhassoul clay?

Rhassoul clay, sometimes called ghassoul or Moroccan lava clay, is a naturally occurring mineral clay traditionally sourced from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Its name comes from the Arabic word ghassala, meaning “to wash,” which tells you quite a bit about how long this ingredient and bathing have been intertwined.

Naturally containing minerals including magnesium, silica, potassium and calcium, rhassoul is an absorbent clay that can help pick up excess oils and buildup from the surface of the skin. When I add it to soap, though, there’s another reason I love it: the feel. It adds this beautiful smoothness and slip to a bar and contributes to the creamy, rich lather that I want from our Botanical Soaps.

There’s also something I really appreciate about getting colour and character from the ingredients themselves. Rhassoul brings these warm, earthy tones to soap without being there simply for decoration. It looks beautiful, but it also has a purpose.

Why put clay in soap at all?

When you make soap from scratch, every little choice changes the finished bar. The oils you choose affect hardness and lather. Essential oils create the scent. Botanicals, salts, charcoal and clays all bring something different to the formulation. I’m constantly thinking about how those ingredients work together rather than adding something simply because it sounds good on a label.

Clay is one of my favourite tools for doing that. Different clays have different characteristics, which is why you'll often see more than one in our formulations. Rhassoul is wonderfully absorbent, kaolin has a soft, fine texture, and other clays bring their own mineral composition, colour and feel. Layering them alongside plant oils and botanicals allows me to build a bar that feels considered from beginning to end.

After making thousands upon thousands of bars of soap over the years, you also start to develop favourites. Rhassoul is definitely one of mine.

Where you'll find rhassoul clay at The Hobbyist

Right now, you’ll find rhassoul clay tucked into several of our Botanical Soaps, including Forest Bathing, Storm Season and Barkley Sound. It shows up a little differently in each formulation, paired with other clays, botanicals and essential oils to create a bar with its own scent, colour and character.

And as I write this, another batch featuring rhassoul has quite literally just hit the curing rack.

I finished batching Winter Waves today, one of our seasonal Botanical Soaps that will be returning for the colder months. Right now the freshly made bars are resting and curing — one of those very unglamorous but essential parts of traditional soapmaking. A freshly cut bar isn't ready to head straight into your shower. It needs time for excess water to evaporate and for the bar to become harder, longer-lasting and ready to use.

There’s something I still love about walking past racks of freshly cut soap in the studio and knowing they simply can't be rushed. So much of running a business requires moving quickly, but soap has absolutely no interest in my schedule. You make it, cut it, put it on the rack and give it the time it needs.

An ingredient with a much longer story than ours

Of course, rhassoul clay didn't become interesting when modern skincare discovered it. Its use stretches back generations, particularly within Moroccan bathing traditions and the hammam, where rhassoul has traditionally been used to cleanse the skin and hair as part of a much larger bathing ritual.

I think that history is worth acknowledging. We live in a time when the beauty industry is constantly looking for the next ingredient, the next innovation or the next thing we're apparently supposed to add to our routines. Meanwhile, some beautifully useful ingredients have been around for a very, very long time.

That doesn't mean I think something is automatically better because it's old, traditional or comes from the earth. That's never really been my approach to making products. I want to know why an ingredient is there, what it contributes to the formulation and whether it actually deserves its place.

Rhassoul does.

It gives our soap its earthy character, contributes to the feel and lather of the bar, works beautifully alongside the other clays and botanicals I formulate with, and connects something I'm making by hand here in Tofino to a tradition of bathing that existed long before The Hobbyist ever did.

For an ingredient that essentially looks like a bag of brown dirt sitting on my soapmaking shelf, I think that's pretty remarkable.