Accringtonia Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Museum of Photocopies

PINS – Rule Twenty-one: Maps – More War

We all know the PINS War is between the Protestant new order in the North and the Catholic old order in the South and is played out in a fictional eighteenth-century. But if you don’t like war – and who does – there are a number of potential escape routes from the Garden where The War takes place. Below are some visual clues for those escape routes. You can make, and photocopy your own, of course. And you can find further clues here, too.

A photograph of a photocopy, coloured with colour pencils, showing a drawing from a photograph, of the curator’s Great Uncle Lawrence, on his mother’s side (East Lancashire), who was a “very nice, kind man.” That is all we know. He escaped into his own world, and from the rest of us too, due to his early death. Try not to escape like Great Uncle Lawrence. The other two slippery, bowler hatted characters are Newts.

A photograph of a photocopy on pink paper of a drawing by the curator in 2B pencil of Russian prisioners of war in Germany. The (striking) image is taken from a small privately published book called, ‘Fotograaf in Krijgsgevangenschap Duitsland 1943-1945’ by Dick van Maarseveen, a Dutch POW. The curator picked it up for 50 guilder cents in 2001. Think about this image when you think of escaping The War.

A photograph of a mind drawing of a a Tragic Figure from the 1920s, probably Isadora Duncan. The curator once saw a silent film about her being strangled by her own scarf in her car. Duncan holds a bronze mask, probably of Agamemnon, another artefact that fascinated the curator as a boy. The Duke of Wellington appears as a sphinx. Escaping the War can often be a discomboulating experience.

A photograph of a photocopy, coloured with colour pencils, showing a drawing from a photograph of the curator wearing his father’s Heworth Colliery Band cap, and banging a drum. The curator was escaping The War by clambering onto the coal bunker. The curator couldn’t help but bring notice to his sitation by banging his toy drum. The figure to the left of the curator is that of his brother, from a slightly later date. His brother was an expert at escape in the late 1970s.

PINS – Rule Twenty: Maps – More Special Features – Garden Worlds

One of the points of PINS is escape. Where better, if you can, to escape into a garden, however humble, where you can best set out your forces for PINS. More information, about gardens in the 1970s, can be found here.

A photograph of a photograph showing an illustration of a forest spirit, a Leshy. The curator used to think they lived in the garden where PINS was played.

A photograph of a photocopy of a collage using photocopies and mixed media, showing a trig point, which can mark the garden where PINS was played.

A photograph of a photograph of a plate showing a tacheometer theodolite, which can help measure the garden where PINS was played.

PINS – Rule Nineteen: Maps – More Special Features – Imagined Worlds

One of the points of PINS is escape. Escape from your job, ambition, dedication and mucking in. This post allows you to contemnplate the idea of escape, through judicious use of the photocopies found here, and work it into your own idea of PINS. More information, here.

A photograph of a photocopy of a collage using photocopies and mixed media, showing a WELSH WOMAN, who originally found her place on a postcard from the early twentieth century. She lives in an imagined world, which can be mapped. Can you do similar?

A photograph of a photograph showing a plate of K2, a Stadia Rod. This instrument can map an imagined world. Can you do similar?

A photograph of a photocopy of a collage using photocopies and mixed media, showing a LANCASHIRE WOMAN, who originally found her place in a different photograph taken in Manchester, in the mid twentieth century. She now lives in an imagined world, which could be mapped. Can you do similar?

PINS – Rule Eighteen: Maps – More Special Features – Lancashire Edition

Maps for PINS need features, we all know that. And it’s time to find the features for your Lancashire map. No matter if you have never been or don’t know where Lancashire is. Lancashire is a state of mind and a mnemonic portal anyone can enter. Just imagine yourself in such a place. You can find out more, here, too.

A photograph of a Lancashire sketch by the photocopier, using pens. Done in an A5 sketchbook for sketching ON THE BUS IN LANCASHIRE. Here, a typical Lancashire house. Maybe this image will unlock similar images of Lancashire in you, to add to your PINS map.

A photograph of a Lancashire sketch by the photocopier, using various pens. Done in an A5 sketchbook for sketching ON THE BUS IN LANCASHIRE. Here, a typical Lancashire pylon, at rest, before it marches forth to conquer Yorkshire. Maybe this image will unlock similar images of Lancashire in you, to add to your PINS map.

A photograph of a Lancashire sketch by the photocopier, using various pencils and pens. Done in an A5 sketchbook for sketching ON THE BUS IN LANCASHIRE. Here, a typical Lancashire person, getting grief from the combined forces of Fate and History. Maybe this image will unlock similar images of Lancashire in you, to add to your PINS map.

PINS – Rule Seventeen: Maps – Special Features

What kinds of features can we add in a map we can use for PINS? There are plenty to choose from – from the back or front of your mind. Or those you use your senses to interact with. You can find out more, here.

A photograph, edited using filters, of an original map drawn on tracing paper of a piece of ground in West Lancashire, made in the 1990s. Note the Caravan Park, a local feature. This image should inspire you to think of local features.

A photograph of a photocopy of a postcard from an exhibition held at the old Technical School in Prague. The image is of Tokor, the cat a toy made of disused or scrap plastic, and sold to Czecho-Slovak children in the 1960s. The curator loved Tokor and immediately realised the many possibilities the toy cat represented.

A photograph, using filters, of a photocopy of a photograph of a pencil drawing in a sketchbook of Tokor, the cat a toy made of disused or scrap plastic, and sold to Czecho-Slovak children in the 1960s. The curator loved Tokor and immediately realised the many possibilities the toy cat represented.

A photograph, using filters, of a photograph of a pencil drawing in a sketchbook of Tokor as a Sphimx, the cat a toy made of disused or scrap plastic, and sold to Czecho-Slovak children in the 1960s. The curator loved Tokor and immediately realised the many possibilities the toy cat represented. Now Tokor, in a new guise as a Sphinx, can be used to be a local feature, somewhere, on one of your PINS maps.

PINS – Rule Sixteen: Making Maps

We think that PINS originated partly through a love of making maps. This means to play PINS you will need to make maps, in as peculiar a manner as you can. We tell you how to do so, here. Meanwhile, maybe these photocopies can bring some inspiration.

A photograph of a photocopy of a sheet – one of many – listing North Norfolk golf courses. The photocopier received this sheet as part of a package listing more golf courses in North Norfolk in 1990, when receiving photocopied notes in the post was a novelty. Maybe this will help you to think what you want to create your maps from.

A photograph of a photocopy of a sheet with a grid where you can make a cat with a bowtie. All part of the British Army’s recruitment drive in the north of England in the 1990s. Comments are not those of the photocopier. But maybe this will help you to think what you want to create your maps from.

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph taken by the photocopier in the 1990s, somewhere near a hill called Jeffrey Hill in East Lancashire. The photocopier’s parents told him that nearby was a function room where they held their wedding reception in 1966. It’s now gone, of course. Like most things. Maybe this will help you to think what you want to create your maps from.

PINS – Rule Fifteen: Hang on a Minute

Now, hang on a minute, before we go further we need to look backwards and forwards. As it’s a new year and a new January (2024, to be precise), it’s good to know what we have learned with PINS, and what we should look forward to.

A photograph of a letter received by the photocopier in the early 1990s, with a photocopied text, sellotaped onto the letter, listing some unnamed valuation. We only know this unhappy scenario came 13th. Lancashire Chief White Witch, Dame Thora Hird, is named, to give the scenario described yet more potency.

A photograph of the front of a photocopy of a letter received by the photocopier in a Leiden pub in the early 2000s. The sender was another Lancastrian. No warning was given. The weird imagery, and the slightly offbeat threat on the reverse (see below) is tied into a request for the return of a number of copies of Manchester punk fanzine, City Fun, which the photocopier had borrowed.

The back of the above, with mention of other, now sadly defunct, Leiden pubs.

PINS – Rule Fourteen: Localities – Superlocal

Sometimes you can’t give local orders, especially superlocal orders, without not being there, in that locality. It helps to be somewhere else. Don’t worry, it’s all explained here. Below, some images to help you keep yourself superlocal.

A photograph of a photograph of a photocopy of a pen and ink drawing, showing some superlocal action in 1972. The butcher had the family name – as old as Doomsday or so it was said. He found a picture of Rommel in the desert and brought it back to the superlocal place. Not that it helped anything. Remember what is superlocal and it will help you make a decision.

A photograph of a photograph of a photocopy of a pen and ink drawing, showing some superlocal action in the row of houses across from the ancient church. No triceratops was ever found in the village, the industrial estate, or the surrounding area.

A photograph of a drawing using pencils and pen and ink, showing the pylons near the old church across the road from the row of houses where the great uncle once sat. Remember what is superlocal and it will help you make a decision.

A photograph of a drawing using photocopies pencils, and pen and ink, showing the someone in the farm near the ancient church. Maybe very near the roof the curator fell through. Remember what is superlocal and it will help you make a decision.

PINS – Rule Eleven: Localities – Lancashire

We decided, in the latest post, to suggest some localities. And we decided to start in the County Palatine of Lancashire; a place which, as the journalist Charles Nevin outrageously suggests in the title of his book on the ceremonial county, a place where Women Die of Love.

Heere are some local localities, a local which may of may not still exist in this way. Soak up their atmosphere, captured deeply and darkly on a December day and ask yourself, is this the locality for me? And where is Peter on the Piano?

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a pub on the road to Accrington centre. It’s Christmas, hence the happy atmosphere. This one shows the BUNGER. Does the image of this intimate locality propel you to choose your own?

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a pub on the road to Accrington centre. It’s Christmas, hence the happy atmosphere. This one shows the TABLE and the door to the OUTSIDE JAKES. Does the image of this intimate locality propel you to choose your own?

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a pub on the road to Accrington centre. It’s Christmas, hence the happy atmosphere. This one shows the ORIGINAL NORTHERN SMOOTHIE. Does the image of this intimate locality propel you to choose your own?

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a pub on the road to Accrington centre. It’s Christmas, hence the happy atmosphere. This one is sideways and shows TH’ARRERS board. Does the image of this intimate locality propel you to choose your own?

PINS – Rule Ten: A Local Decision

Local decisions are important in the game of PINS. That’s where most decisions are made, locally. You can learn more here. For now, here are some photocopies to help you make your very own local decision.