Dolly Tub hand sanitizer a perfect pandemic partner

Lifestyle, Health & Beauty with Denise McNamara

With all talk turning to second waves in the Covid-19 pandemic as restrictions begin to lift, businesses are increasingly coming up with innovative ways to live with the disease in the long term.

One of the most common complaints I’ve had and heard about from a beauty perspective since the country went into lockdown was how damaging hand sanitizer is to your hands.

One Galway artist has turned her effort to just this problem by creating a formula which nourishes while getting rid of the virus on hands.

Suzanne Orford runs her business, The Dolly Tub, from the family’s 300-year-old pink cottage, nestled in the Slieve Aughty Mountains.

She and partner Matthew moved to Peterswell in 2004 where they now raise their three children, Bridget May (13), Joe (8) and Gracie (6). Throw into the mix two dogs, three gold fish, a cat, two rabbits, two ponies and a goat and you can see what a busy household this is.

Before moving from Liverpool to be near her mother who had moved to Glenamaddy, Suzanne had worked as Independent textile artist, selling to craft galleries at home and abroad.  For their 2005 nuptials, she decided to make small bars of soap for their wedding favours. She wrapped the goat’s milk soap up in a pretty pale blue box and inside placed an 1930s verse card saying ‘shower me with your sweet love, let it pour, let it pour’.

They went down a treat.

“So much so that a few of the guests thought they were fudge – it didn’t end well. I enjoyed the process of creating soap recipes, playing about with essential oils and botanicals, but most of all designing the packaging,” she explains.

“I make the soap using unpasteurized goats’ milk, straight from the farm. I also use ingredients such as local honey, olive, castor and coconut oil, which all help to retain the natural PH balance of the skin, especially when using soap.”

She began hauling her sweet-smelling wares, such as goats milk soap, balms, candles and bath powders to farmers’ markets and country fairs.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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