What it soapstone?

You cannot use a cake of soapstone to whip up a frothy bath. But its silken smooth surface feels like the surface of a cake of fine soap. You cannot cut soapstone with a knife as easily as you can cut soap. But soapstone is so soft that you can sometimes scratch it with a fingernail. In fact, soapstone races as one of the world’s softest minerals.

Soapstone is the easiest of all minerals to carve for it can be cut and shaped with a sharp knife. It comes in pearly white, primrose yellow, shell pink, pale green and deep leaf green. It may be opaque or translucent and when polished it gleams with a waxy glow. An object made from soapstone is beautiful to see and silken smooth to the touch.

Some of the loveliest soapstone carvings are delicate figurines made in China. The Indians and even the Eskimos put soapstone to more useful purposes. They found hunks of native soapstone in the eastern and the western mountains and carved them into hollow bowls and basins. These were used as lamps and cooking pots, for in spite of its fraile appearance, soapstone is very resistent to heat and acids.

In ancient Babylon, cylinders of soapstone were carved with signatures and rolled to leave an impression on wet clay. In ancient Egypt, soapstone was used to make work. a. day pots and duplicate images. In American colonial days, soapstone was used to make laundry tubs, sinks and mantles.

Soapstone, also called steatite, is a form of the mineral called talc. Basically, it is a compound of the elements magnesium, silicon and oxygen mixed with varying amounts of water. It is one of the metamorphic rocks which occur when older rocks are broken down and reformed.

Talc forms when hard, magnesium rich rocks are altered, often by hot spring water. It may occur in flaky or granular lumps, usually in regions where the earth’s crust has been stressed and strained by growing mountains.

Steatito or soapstone is made mostly of talc particles compressed in dense masses. On the mineral scale of hardness, it rates in class one   which makes it one of the worlds softest stones. It is the same hardness as graphite, which is the so called lead in a lead pencils Soapstone is quarried in the mountains of New England, as far south as Virginia and in certain areas along the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

In pure form talc is a smooth and slippery mineral. It is so greasy that it can be used as a lubricant. It is used to make cosmetics, paint, paper and crayons. It is, of course, talcum powder and, of all things, this basic ingredient of soapstone may also be used in soap¬ making.