Por Valenti® Cronología

The origins of our family’s soapmaking have been traced back to at least the First World War, when my bisnonna (great-grandmother) made soap on her family’s farm on the outskirts of Trieste in northern Italy.

Using fats saved from the kitchen and ash from the fireplaces, she produced a simple, reliable soap that sustained the household — for bathing, laundry, dishes, and cleaning — a necessity of farm life at the time.

Having grown up on the farm, my nonna (grandmother) inherited that same soap and process, which became a constant presence in her daily life. Little did she know that, more than a century later, it would become the foundation of our family’s brand.

After moving to the city, marrying, raising three children, and later separating from my nonno, she found herself in a small apartment at Via del Pesce 1, Trieste, as the Second World War unfolded. Desperate, frightened and alone, to provide for herself and her three young sons — including my father — she returned to the soapmaking methods her mother had relied upon. In those difficult years, resilience, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency became values that defined our family and were woven into our heritage. Just like her mother before her, the boys — especially my father being the youngest —, were instrumental in the production of this soap.

That tradition — first practiced by my bisnonna, carried on by my nonna, passed down to my father, and now to me — remains alive in By Valenti® and at the heart of our soapery today. What began as a necessity, born of hardship and carried through generations for more than a century, has become the foundation of a science-driven, modernized, and refined skincare brand built on authenticity, quality, respect for nature, and true Italian tradition.

Manuela Valenti-Saviozzi-Sferch