This must be the first time we’ve reviewed a soap-on-a-rope here at Now Smell This. I’ve always thought of soap-on-a-rope (basically just a bar of soap with a nylon hang-cord attached) as the sort of 1970s-era item that was (is?) only purchased as a slightly depressing, last-resort Father’s Day gift or a holiday present for a male grade-school teacher. Affordable and practical, but sort of silly. You know.

Senteurs d’Orients’ Hammam Soap on a Rope is an altogether different sort of object, and you would never confuse it with a last-minute purchase from the drugstore or the Avon catalogue. These soaps are hand-crafted by local artisans in Lebanon. They’re circular and oversized, hand-molded with elegant, filigree-like patterns of leaves and floral motifs. They’re packaged in decorative, hand-folded boxes, and (most importantly) their scents were developed by the “master perfumers of Grasse…”

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