Soap Commander / Honor
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(01-22-2023, 06:49 PM)Bouki Wrote: Denarius (Wholly Kaw) Mousse de Saxe
Shave 1 ・ 117 g left
PRESENTATION The label seems to depict the damaged statue of a Roman emperor taking the salute of his legionaries. The pedestal is stained with blood. Is this meant to be Brutus after the assassination of Caesar? Is it Augustus? And why name a soap after a Roman coin, the denarius? A Roman legionary would earn about a hundred of these each year, but what does that have to do with shaving? I must admit that a lifetime of studying the Latin classics has not prepared me for this moment. All very curious.
SCENT Notes include leather, vanilla, clary sage, geranium, patchouli, ionone woods (which smell like violets), and anise. This is Wholly Kaw’s interpretation of the famous Mousse de Saxe, a perfume base devised by De Laire about a 120 years ago. It was meant to suggest the smell of tree moss. Dark, sweet, green, and powdery all at once, it sits on a base of damp leathery notes. The image it brings to mind is of a saddle abandoned in a forest for a season and slowly overgrown with moss and ferns. If you’ve ever smelled Barrister & Mann’s Beaudelaire, you’ll note many similarities.
LATHER This is my first outing with Wholly Kaw’s siero base, and I’m impressed. It’s lighter than I expected and not quite as slick as I imagined, but the overall performance is excellent. Again I used a wet brush to load and came away with mounds of frothy lather. I knocked them down with the addition of considerable amounts of warm water until I had the thick emulsion I prefer. The soap contains vanilla, which is known to stain brushes. You may want to dedicate a black-bristled brush to Denarius.
THE UPSHOT I’m bowled over, partly by the intricacy of the fantastic scent, partly by the quality of the base, but mostly by the generosity of the shaver who shared this tub with me. We’ve got a great crew here on DFS.
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Razor Edwin Jagger DES89KN Kelvin ・ Blade Gillette Platinum ・ Brush PAA Amber Aerolite ・ Hoard 18,543 g (⇣21,302 g)
(01-22-2023, 06:49 PM)Bouki Wrote: Denarius (Wholly Kaw) Mousse de SaxeGreat post Bouki-master. Good not know or was a Mousse de Saxe target
Shave 1 ・ 117 g left
PRESENTATION The label seems to depict the damaged statue of a Roman emperor taking the salute of his legionaries. The pedestal is stained with blood. Is this meant to be Brutus after the assassination of Caesar? Is it Augustus? And why name a soap after a Roman coin, the denarius? A Roman legionary would earn about a hundred of these each year, but what does that have to do with shaving? I must admit that a lifetime of studying the Latin classics has not prepared me for this moment. All very curious.
SCENT Notes include leather, vanilla, clary sage, geranium, patchouli, ionone woods (which smell like violets), and anise. This is Wholly Kaw’s interpretation of the famous Mousse de Saxe, a perfume base devised by De Laire about a 120 years ago. It was meant to suggest the smell of tree moss. Dark, sweet, green, and powdery all at once, it sits on a base of damp leathery notes. The image it brings to mind is of a saddle abandoned in a forest for a season and slowly overgrown with moss and ferns. If you’ve ever smelled Barrister & Mann’s Beaudelaire, you’ll note many similarities.
LATHER This is my first outing with Wholly Kaw’s siero base, and I’m impressed. It’s lighter than I expected and not quite as slick as I imagined, but the overall performance is excellent. Again I used a wet brush to load and came away with mounds of frothy lather. I knocked them down with the addition of considerable amounts of warm water until I had the thick emulsion I prefer. The soap contains vanilla, which is known to stain brushes. You may want to dedicate a black-bristled brush to Denarius.
THE UPSHOT I’m bowled over, partly by the intricacy of the fantastic scent, partly by the quality of the base, but mostly by the generosity of the shaver who shared this tub with me. We’ve got a great crew here on DFS.
____________
Razor Edwin Jagger DES89KN Kelvin ・ Blade Gillette Platinum ・ Brush PAA Amber Aerolite ・ Hoard 18,543 g (⇣21,302 g)
(01-22-2023, 10:42 PM)Bouki Wrote: Denarius (Wholly Kaw) Mousse de SaxeNice posts and research, Bouki.
Earlier today this label mystified me, so I did a little research to figure it out. Here’s what I learned.
What we’re probably looking at is the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC. The statue is Pompey the Great, who built the curia (the hall) where the murder took place. The blood on the pedestal is Caesar’s. He was stabbed twenty-three times and most likely died of blood loss, as a post-mortem suggested that no one wound was fatal. The raised daggers are held by the conspiring Roman senators who killed Caesar, fearing he was becoming tyrannical. They hoped his murder would restore the Republic, when in fact it only led to a series of bloody civil wars.
So why name this soap "Denarius"? Well, the denarius was a silver or gold coin which served as the basis of Roman currency for nearly four hundred years. This was the coin used for most business transactions such as shopping and paying wages. The coins were decorated with the images of Roman deities until the reign of Julius Caesar. He had his own likeness stamped on them. This infuriated the conspirators, who thought Caesar was assuming godlike powers. In the year following the assassination, one of the conspiring senators issued a new denarius to commemorate the ‘liberation’ of the people of Rome. One the reverse was minted two daggers, a cap, and the legend “Eid Mar,” meaning the Ides of March. This is the yellow disk we see behind the statue of Pompey on the soap’s label. If you look closely, you can just make out the "E" of "Eid Mar."
The murderous conspirators were not in the least popular with their fellow citizens, who dearly loved Caesar. They were forced to flee, and their Eid Mar denarius was recalled and melted down. Very few of these coins have survived. Only two golden version are known to exist, each worth well over $4,000,000. Because of its rarity and historical significance, numismatists consider this denarius the greatest coin from antiquity.
Long story short, looks like Sri is also interested in coin collecting, and he's picked out the most remarkable coin for the name of his most remarkable soap.
(01-23-2023, 02:25 AM)Nero Wrote:Brilliant observation, Nero! You're right. That is Brutus' head on the obverse of the golden denarius. That Sri is full of clever puns, both visual and olfactory.(01-22-2023, 10:42 PM)Bouki Wrote: Denarius (Wholly Kaw) Mousse de SaxeNice posts and research, Bouki.
And maybe the main figure is Brutus... as Brut is a mousse de Saxe type, no?