I was wondering about that - I assumed that’s what they did, and then they completely avoided talking about that step (and whatever they did to reassemble the halves), but it would be obviously absurd to have this heavy, solid wooden core and then put papier-mâché and plaster on top. (Not only would it be heavy as hell, but the papier-mâché and plaster would both be redundant.) This also explains the use of plaster, which confused me - the two papier-mâché halves probably don’t fit together too smoothly after being cut off the mold and reassembled, so plaster helps make it more perfectly round.
Yeah, I’m assuming they used traditional materials there (basically wheat-based adhesives), so though non-toxic, they would still be hard on the hands. A friend, when in her 20s, was an assistant to a ceramics-based artist, so she was always preparing wet clay and similar materials. She said it gave her pretty bad eczema, with her hands constantly dry, cracked and bleeding. It visibly aged her hands a few decades. True for a lot of work that involves working with non-toxic wet materials.
Exactly the kind I had as a kid. I was thinking the cardboard version replaced this more laborious papier-mâché and plaster type, but I looking for dates on cardboard globes, they seemingly were in use for decades before this film was made. May have been an issue of different qualities…
