Description

“Musica Stylo” – staff drawing device

This novel device was designed to draw staves.  It was a development on the “rastrum” or “raster”, which was a five-pointed writing implement used in music manuscripts to draw parallel staff lines when drawn horizontally across a blank piece of sheet music.

The French patent number 644122 was granted on 26 May 1928 to Albert Serouille de Marsay (1876-1951). He worked at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, was retired from the Ministry of Air, a musician, bookbinder, typographer and of course, inventor. He is also known for authoring the book Bezons à travers les âges (Bezons Through the Ages), a local history book released in 1944, which features a preface by the well-known French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Patent 644122 was for a “Régleur à main, plus particulièrement destiné au tracage des portées musicales”, or “Hand-operated ruler, specifically designed for drawing musical staves”.

Perhaps Monsieur de Marsay was inspired by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), who also invented a form of rastrum around 1911 and called it the “Stravigor”. With the outbreak of WW1, it was never patented.

Our little device comes with three different rollers. They change the height of the staves. It was originally supplied with a special ink made by the company HERBIN (Jacque Herbin), founded in 1670 in Paris, which still exists today and is the world’s oldest manufacturer of fountain pen inks and sealing wax. This stave drawer is in working condition and comes in its original box with instructions (en français!).