Scratch the squeakily wholesome surface and there's some grubby truths here: the imperial ideals of old brands such as Fairbank's Gold Dust (depicting 'piccaninny' children scrubbing floors and laundry) against 'the Great Unwashed', hilarious smear campaigns (manufacturers Proctor And Gamble were accused of Satanism in the 1980s), and the Ivory Snow 'madonna' who became an infamous porn star. There's specially commissioned work from new designers, including Nick Crosbie's clothes pegs and bags fashioned from recycled soap boxes, and heady surmising from creatives such as Will Self ('Consider the washing tablet bag,' he writes. 'When freighted with its two rectilinear tablets, is it not a virtual simulacrum of the scrotum?') and Suzanne Moore, observing: 'In our obsession with cleansing ourselves, we refuse to see that we actually make the world a dirtier place.'