staffengraved

Staffengraved is a rarely used term that appears mainly in catalog notes, inventories, or scholarly discussions rather than as a standardized label in engraving or music notation. In this sense, staffengraved serves as an adjective or past participle describing an engraving in which the musical staff lines are an explicit and integral element of the design.

In the context of music printing and engraving, staff lines were often incised or etched into metal plates (and sometimes woodblocks) along with notes and other notation. A staffengraved plate would have the five-line staff as part of the engraved surface, providing guidance for the placement of notes and the spacing of measures when inked and printed. This technique is associated with earlier periods of music publishing, before the dominance of later typesetting or lithographic methods, when engravers cut the notation directly into a durable matrix.

The term is not widely standardized and may vary in meaning between catalogs and scholarly works. Because it can be ambiguous, it is advisable to describe the technique explicitly when documenting artifacts, for example by noting that the score was produced from a staff-engraved copper plate or woodblock used for music notation.

See also: music engraving, copperplate engraving, notation in printmaking.