Dear Marco

Thought I speculated that there would have to be two masters. Also moulds do
not have to be containment. Clay could have been flattened down onto one mould
and a second mould impressed over this. Bit easier than lifting a single
stamped piece of flattened out circular clay, turning it and then laying it
down on its foreside. There is a bit of a lip to Phaistos. Excess clay would
not have to be trimmed off as the clay would not necessarily have to fill the
moulds to their edges. Nor do the moulds have to be heated. The top mould
could be removed immediately after impression. The surface of the substrate
allowed to bake in the sun and at a certain point, the bottom mould turned
over and removed. Then the bottom side of the substrate allowed to bake.

Not trying to build a case here, but seemed to me that some basic technique
may have been ignored in the deciphering concerns.

Gerald

Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>
> Gerald Lange wrote:
> > If so, has anyone ever suggested an even bigger step, but perhaps not
> > an unnatural bump forward - that this was made in a sandwich mould?
> > This would only require secondary "casting." This guess made on other
> > measurements and certain moulding characteristics (stretch and
> > planing) that seemingly are in evidence here.
>
> Sorry, my readings about the Disk are very old, and my memories are emerging
> gradually.
>
> I just recalled two more arguments against the molding of the whole disk:
>
> 1) One face is slightly more flat that the other; on the flat face, the
> signs are less deeply stamped, and some of them are slightly stretched.
> This seems to suggest that, after making the first face, the disk was turned
> face down to stamp the second "page". The face laying on the table would
> then have been compressed by the weight of the clay and by the pressure
> exercised on the other side. If the disk just had to be an master copy to
> build a mould, there would have been no reason to use both sides of the
> clay: each face would have been stamped on separate pieces of clay.
>
> 2) The edge of the disk is rounded. This is what you expect when a ball of
> clay is manually flattened on the table. On the other hand, if you press
> clay between two sandwich moulds, clay squeezes out from the sides; the
> natural thing to do is to get a knife and remove the excess clay before
> opening the moulds: in this case, the edge should be a cylindrical surface,
> like the edge of a coin. If the excess clay was not trimmed off, then we
> should see the border of the mould on the two faces.
>
> _ Marco
>
>
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