Zwartbaerd

Fijne Waren voor Heeren

Soap, oil, steel and balm.
Made slowly, in small lots, on the old coast.

A shaving brush laid on folded linen beside a pewter bowl, a folded razor half open, and a curl of lemon rind. Lit from the upper left, the right of the scene falling away into shadow.

De haven in deze bladen heeft geen naam.

Aan den Lezer

The harbour in these pages has no name. It was never built, no one has ever sailed from it, and it stands on no chart but ours. We drew it because it is where these goods seem to come from — a grey quay somewhere along the old Dutch coast, a cold loft, a north-west wind, and a house that takes its time.

Zwartbaerd itself is a working house of the present day. We make soap and oil and balm now, in this century, under our own names. What we have borrowed from the eighteenth is its patience, its lettering, and its habit of describing a thing plainly and then stopping. What we have not borrowed is a history we did not have.

There is no founding date under our mark, and there never will be. The goods are exactly what they say they are, and the weights on the labels are the weights in the jars. That seemed to us a better inheritance than an invented one.

— Het Huis

1 zeemijl

De Oude Kust · Gezien uit Zee · Gepeild op Vier Vadem · Pl. I: The old coast, seen from the sea, sounded at four fathoms.

Het huis staat waar de Z gemerkt is.

Wet hands drawing a cutting wire through a slab of pale soap on a wooden bench.

Wooden drying racks stacked with cakes of soap, receding into the dark of a loft, lit by one high window.

Het Ambacht

Four hours at the kettle, ninety days in the loft

Shaving soap is not difficult to make. It is difficult to wait for.

Ours is boiled in an open kettle, poured into a wooden tray, cut by hand with a wire, and then left alone in a cold loft for three months while the water leaves it. That waiting is the whole product. A soap rushed to the shelf in a fortnight will lather; it will simply lather less, and for less time, and you will finish the cake sooner. We would rather make fewer.

Everything below is done by two people in one room, in lots of ninety cakes. When a lot runs out, it runs out, and we say so on the page rather than taking your money and apologising later.

Koken: Tallow, oil and lye, boiled in an open kettle. Four hours.
Gieten: Poured into a lined wooden tray and left overnight to set.
Snijden: Cut by wire into ninety cakes, by hand, in one pass.
Droogen: Racked in the loft. Ninety days, turned once a week.

Het Ambacht bezoeken

Handelswaeren

Six goods, and no more than six

We have made a great many things over the years and kept the ones that were worth keeping. What follows is all of it.

Scheerzeep No. 4
Tallow, cedarwood and a little sea salt. Cured ninety days. Lathers hard and slow.
Baardolie No. 2
Argan and cedar, pressed thin. Two drops is the whole dose; four is a mistake.
Scheermes No. 1
Carbon steel, hollow ground, set in horn. Sharpened before it leaves the bench. Will outlive you if stropped.
Scheerkwast No. 1
Set in turned beech, tied by hand. Holds water rather than releasing it all at once.
Gezichtswater
Witch hazel, cedar and salt. Cool on the skin, no burn, no scent by evening.
Baardzalf
Beeswax and shea, worked soft. For a beard that has opinions about direction.

Handelswaeren

De Stoffen

What is in them

Four materials do most of the work. We buy them from people we have met.

Ceder Cedrus atlantica Pl. II
The scent everything else is built around. Dry, resinous, faintly sharp — closer to a pencil box than to a forest.
Argan Argania spinosa Pl. III
Cold-pressed, unroasted, and pale. It sinks in rather than sitting on top, which is the only property that matters in an oil.
Talk Sevum bovinum Pl. IV
Rendered beef fat, and the reason the soap lathers the way it does. Nothing plant-derived matches it. We say so plainly because some will want to know.
Zeezout Sal maris Pl. V
A very little, for grip and for the smell of weather. Too much and the cake weeps in a warm bathroom.

Het Ontleedstuk

The razor, taken apart

Seven pieces, one moving joint, and nothing that cannot be repaired at a bench.

Het Scheermes No. 1 · Ontleed · Pl. VI

A razor is a wedge on a hinge. Everything else is preference.

Het Scheermes No. 1

Het Scheepsjournaal

From the journal

Den Elfden November

Wind from the north-west all week and the loft has not been above six degrees. The soap is slow. Ninety days will be ninety-four, and there is nothing to be done about it but turn the racks and wait.

Two crates went out on Thursday. The rest stays where it is until it is ready.

A man wrote from Antwerp to say the No. 4 lathers better in his water than anything he has used, and his water is very hard. I do not know why this should be. I have written to ask what else he has tried.

Het Scheepsjournaal

De Voorwaarden

Plainly, then

Verzending: Netherlands and Belgium in two working days. The rest of Europe in five. Packed in unbleached paper and twine, in a box that will survive a wet doorstep.
Retouren: Thirty days, opened or unopened, used or unused. We pay the return postage. No form, no reason required — write to the office and a label will follow.
Betaling: iDEAL, card, or bank transfer. Prices include VAT.
Het Kantoor: Write at any hour — kantoor@zwartbaerd.nl. Answered within one working day, by one of the two people who made the thing you are writing about.

De Brief

The letter

Four times a year we write to the people on this list. What is being made, what has run out, what is going in the kettle next, and what the weather is doing on the quay.

Four letters a year, and nothing between them. No offers, no reminders, no counting down to anything. If we have nothing worth saying in a quarter, we do not write.

Ingeschreven.Your name is on the list. The next letter goes out in March.