A £10,000 appeal has been launched by one of the region's top museums to return a unique piece of furniture to its natural home.

Officials at the Bowes Museum, at Barnard Castle, County Durham, believe the miniature botanical cabinet belonged to Mary Eleanor Bowes, grandmother of founder John Bowes, an ancestor to the Queen Mother.

The Bowes is negotiating over the price of the cabinet, thought to be worth in the region of £10,000. It is currently on loan to the museum.

Marketing manager Dr Anne Allen said that if the museum failed to buy the piece it could be sold to a private collector and lost to public view.

Mary Eleanor was the last surviving heiress of the Bowes family. Botany was one of her passions, and the cabinet is modelled on a fine burr elm and kingwood veneer botanical cabinet that already belongs to the museum.

The larger cabinet was built to house specimen plants collected for Mary Eleanor by the botanist William Paterson on a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope in 1777.

Dr Allen, believes the tiny cabinet - just 33cm high - may have been a gift for one of Mary Eleanor's daughters.

In 1915, the magazine Country Life published an article on the Bowes' ancestral home at Streatlam Castle, near the museum, with an illustration of the drawing room showing the miniature version.

Dr Allen said: "Bowes Museum is by far the most appropriate home for the model, especially as the Queen Mother is our patron. We are determined to reunite the two cabinets so they can be kept on public display for the education and enjoyment of future generations.

"We have until the end of July to raise the necessary funding to acquire the cabinet and are approaching several grant-giving bodies.