Photo: Pink Floyd's website.
Air Artists, a UK-based company specializing in formidable inflatable props, is selling 30 years of its work this September through Durrants‘s auction wing, according to BBC News.
The collection will include iconic inflatable stage props used by the likes of Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and Bon Jovi.
Perhaps the best-known lot up for grabs is Algie, the inflatable pig that floated above London’s Battersea Power station for Pink Floyd’s tenth studio album, Animals, released in 1977.
During the 1976 photo shoot the giant pig famously broke free from its station, crashing into a plane on its way to Heathrow Airport and subsequently cancelling all air traffic. It was later found at a farm in Kent, according to the Daily Mail.
The original Algie is the sale’s star lot, even though Air Artists did produce another version in 2011 to celebrate the reissue of the band’s 14 studio albums.
According to the BBC, a representative from Durrants said they “really don’t know” the prices for the lots will sell because the pieces are so “unusual.”
Other props for sale include a pig’s head from Roger Water’s Berlin Wall concert made in 1990 and a controversial nude “Babylonian” woman crouching on all fours from a Rolling Stones tour.
Rob Harries of Air Artists told BBC, “They very rarely see the light of day and so I would be quite happy for someone else to take them for a walk.”