ENGLAND, Quentin Crisp’s Fedora, 2002, a uniface cast bronze medal by J.W. Mills [Lunts Castings] for the British Art Medal Society, bust left wearing fedora, back with engraved signature John Mills, 111 x 109mm, 308.90g (The Medal 41, pp.118-20; E 2208, recté edition of 17). Extremely fine and patinated, rare £100-£150

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals.

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bt BAMS, April 2003

Edition of 17. Denis Charles Pratt, aka Quentin Crisp (1908-99), b. Sutton. Formally a rent boy, then changed his name and became a professional model for life classes and a gay icon, as well as author of The Naked Civil Servant. The artist knew Crisp well from the latter’s days as an artist’s model, and Crisp wore a new black fedora hat that an admirer had given him on the day he arrived for his last sitting with Mills in the summer of 1977.