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Self-taught soapsmith guides others in age-old craft

Bartley recognized with Lifetime Mentor Award

Soapsmith Bonnie Klisiewicz Bartley has been hooked on creating her own suds since watching a documentary about a chef who left a high-stress job to grow herbs and make soap.

"I was just so fascinated -- I went to the library and checked out all the books they had on the subject," she said.

Bartley spent weeks reading about the process before trying her first batch.

Once the soap was in the mold and the chemical reaction generated enough heat to bring it into the gel phase she read about, Bartley was hooked.

"I could have danced, I was so excited," she said.

While it's been decades since she first started making soap, Bartley said she continues to find pleasure in it.

"I can be a mad scientist and an artisan at the same time," she said.

Bartley, who since 1979 has operated her own soap-making business, Allegheny Hearth Soaps, was recognized in March with the Lifetime Mentor Award from the Heritage Herbs Conference held in Tennessee.

She made soap long before the current wave of do-it-yourself kits, noting it was years after she started before she met another soapsmith. Now, she belongs to a group that includes thousands of other artisans.

Because she learned about traditional soap through books and trial and error, Bartley is dedicated to teaching others the age-old craft.

"Where would we be without the generations before who taught us how to make soap?" she asked.

Thanks to the advances in technology, Bartley's mentoring and teaching styles have run the gauntlet from in-person classes, speaking engagements, group demonstrations and gatherings, to workshops, conventions, emails, instant messages and blog posts on her website, alleghenyhearth.com.

"She is a rock star in the soap making world -- she is so respected and generous with her time, offering advice to others who make or want to make soap succeed in their businesses," said Maryland resident Gen Brozgala, who started out purchasing products from Bartley and then joined some groups so she could learn about the process.

As a mentor, Brozgala said Bartley is knowledgeable, a born teacher and a respected elder to the community.

"She takes great care to instruct on proper techniques, the chemistry of making soap, safety procedures and always provides highly detailed information making it easy to follow," Brozgala said.

Bartley offers advice not only about making soap, but about operating a small business, Brozgala said.

"I approached her with some basic questions and she offered great guidance," she said, adding that Bartley offered to help her with anything she needed to make her first soap.

Brozgala instant messaged Bartley with questions when she was ready to start, and Bartley worked with her for many months guiding her through the process.

"I have made my own soap for personal use, but I will say my soap has been greatly improved with her help," she said. "I still treat myself to her soaps because it is just so great."

Some customers, Bartley said, are now on the fourth generation using her soaps, with grandmothers passing it on to their children and grandchildren.

Brook Kane, originally from Hollidaysburg but now living near Philadelphia, continues to have Bartley's soap shipped to her home.

Kane said her mother introduced her to Bartley's soap when she bought it at the Blair County Arts Festival years ago.

"She loved it so much, she gave me a bar, and I have used it ever since," she said.

Kane said her children have grown up with the soap, which comes in fun shapes for kids.

As her children establish their own households, Kane said they continue to use Bartley's soap.

"My daughter uses Bonnie's castile soap for our new granddaughter," she added.

Always learning

As Bartley mentors others, she also continues to learn more aspects of the trade, noting soap making has progressed a lot since she first started.

"The internet is what really helped things go crazy," she said, noting she went from 500 sales in her first year to having 70,000 items sold online.

Picking ingredients has gotten easier and the selections are vast.

Instead of ordering from a paper catalog, she has access to hundreds of online suppliers and ingredients like shea, mango and cocoa butters, coconut palm and avocado oils that were difficult to get before the internet.

Bartley was accustomed to the cold processed method to make her soaps, but with the internet, she has learned about many other techniques, as well.

There are also online calculators to help soapmakers figure out how certain mixes of oils, fatty acids and lye will turn out.

That's a plus, as previously she would do the math herself to determine the sap value of each oil or fatty acid combined with the lye and then manually compute the super fat to get the proper proportions for each soap -- a somewhat time-consuming task.

Now, with the online calculators, Bartley can swap out oil or butter, and in an instant, the calculator will let her know if the solution is more or less cleansing, bubbly or gentle on the skin.

Today, Bartley's product line includes 250 items ranging from soaps, powder puffs, cherry pit wraps, salts, muds, clays, creams, butters, balms and many other products for pampering the body.

Her favorite scent is lavender, which she grows in her own garden.

Bartley finds ideas for her soaps from nature. Just like her garden and nature in general with its various colors, textures and scents, her soaps come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, textures and scents -- including seashell and beach soaps, flower garden soaps and gemstone crystal soap rocks, to name a few.

The Bartley file

Name: Bonnie Klisiewicz Bartley

Age: 69

Hometown: Altoona

Education: Bishop Guilfoyle, technical schools for accounting, computer, some at Penn State, Greater Altoona Career and Technical Center, Triad Business.

Career: Retired after 35 years as office manager at Fiore True Value Hardware; soapmaker, small business owner since 1979

Family: Three adult sons

Hobbies: Avid gardener, voracious reader

Pets: None at the moment, but she has had many over the years and dog sits Labrador retriever "granddogs" regularly