Damien Hirst has been accused of copying yet another artist’s ideas.

Three weeks after the artist unveiled his diamond-encrusted skull with a price of £50 million, another artist, John LeKay, has told The Times that he has been producing similar jewel-encrusted skulls since 1993 (see image 2, left). He also believes that it is not the only one of his ideas that Hirst has used in some way.

LeKay, who claims to have been a friend of Hirst’s between 1992 and 1994, and who shared a mixed show with him in New York in 1994, said of the diamond skull: “When I heard he was doing it, I felt like I was being punched in the gut. When I saw the image online, I felt that a part of me was in the piece. I was a bit shocked.”

LeKay, a 46-year-old Londoner who lives in New York, created 25 of the skulls in 1993. Inspired by Mayan skulls, he used crystal to make his skull glisten. “When the light hits it, it looks as if it is covered in diamonds,” he said.

Over the years, he has explored the idea repeatedly, covering skulls made of soap and wax with artificial diamonds and Swarovski crystals.

He said: “I would like Damien to acknowledge that ‘John really did inspire the skull and influenced my work a lot’. Damien’s very insecure about his originality. He used to say, ‘You’re a better artist than me’.

“He can be affectionate and is fun to be around, but he struggles to come up with ideas. It takes years of work to develop something. My stuff with crystals took a lot of research. You don’t just get there. He’s impatient. He’s a lazy artist.”

While Hirst is still looking for a buyer with £50 million to spare, LeKay’s skulls have sold for less than $2,500 (£1.200).

Last week Hirst’s Lullaby Spring – a medicine chest that would be mistaken for just that if placed anywhere other than an auction house or art gallery – changed hands for £9.6 million at Sotheby’s, making him the world’s most expensive living artist.

Hirst made his name by pickling a shark, then won the Turner Prize in 1995 with an exhibition that included Mother and Child, Divided – the severed halves of a cow and calf preserved in formaldehyde. LeKay claims that Hirst took such ideas from science education products sold by Carolina Biological Supply Company.

“I gave Damien a marked-up duplicate copy of the catalogue,” he said. “You have no idea how much he got from this catalogue. The Cow Divided is on page 647 – it is a model of a cow divided down the centre, like his piece. I gave him the catalogue to help him find butterflies.”

The similarity between Hirst’s diamond skull, For the Love of God, and skull-themed jewellery with Swarovski crystals produced by Butler and Wilson was reported earlier this month, but Hirst is no stranger to plagiarism claims.

Last year Robert Dixon, a graphics artist, said that Hirst’s print Valium bore unmistakable similarities to one of his circular designs on page 74 of The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, published in 1991.

He claimed that when he initially contacted Hirst in 2003 he was taken aback by the e-mail response from the artist’s manager. Apparently unaware of Mr Dixon’s involvement with it, the manager said that Hirst had drawn inspiration from a book given to him by a friend – The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry.

Mr Dixon told The Times: “So Hirst’s manager wrote back to say the drawing was ‘nothing to do with you’, not realising that it was.”

Neither Hirst’s office, Science, nor his dealer, the White Cube, wished to comment yesterday.

Inspired

— Norman Emms, who designed a £14.99 plastic anatomical toy that was reproduced as a £1 million, 20ft bronze torso by Hirst, later received a “goodwill payment” from the artist

— The Stuckists, a group campaigning for traditional artistry, displayed a shark that hung in a London shop window two years before Hirst’s work was first shown

— The actor Keith Allen said that the theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn paid £27,000 for a Hirst painting that had been done by Hirst’s two-year-old son and Allen’s ten-year-old son

Source: Times database

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