ONE of the region's top museums is launching an appeal to save a unique piece of furniture from being lost to public view.

Officials at the Bowes museum in Barnard Castle believe the miniature botanical cabinet belonged to Mary Eleanor Bowes, grandmother of founder John Bowes, making the museum its natural home.

The Bowes is locked in negotiations 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, though confident of the appeal's success, expressed concern that should the museum not acquire the piece, it would be sold to a private collector and lost to public view.

Mary Eleanor, also known as the unhappy countess on account of her disastrous second marriage to the cruel Andrew "Stoney" Bowes, 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.

Mary Eleanor married Stoney Bowes in the same year. He had a reputation for cruelty from his first marriage. When they met, Mary Eleanor was pregnant from an affair with George Grey. To win her favour, Stoney had anonymous letters denouncing her behaviour published in the Morning Post, and then challenged the editor to a duel.

He became violent towards his new wife when he found he had no control over her fortune. She filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and adultery. Stoney decided to take the law into his own hands and kidnapped her. He twice tried to force her to sign papers at gunpoint, but she refused. Local pitmen rescued her after a hunt across the North-East from Brough as far as Newcastle.

In 1915, Country Life published an article on the Bowes' ancestral home at Streatlam Castle with an illustration of the drawing room that showed the miniature cabinet on the mantelpiece. The tiny cabinet - which is just 33cm high - may have been constructed as a model for the larger cabinet or as a gift or souvenir for one of Mary Eleanor's daughters.

The Bowes museum is determined to reunite the two cabinets so they can be kept on public display for the education and enjoyment of future generations. The appeal is to ensure that happens. It has until the end of July to raise the necessary funding to acquire the cabinet and is approaching several grant-giving bodies to match the donations received from the public campaign.

l The museum is also exploring the possibility of acquiring paintings that have hung in the Bishop of Durham's residence at Auckland Castle for more than 250 years, if the Church Commissioners' Board of Governors decide to sell them. The paintings by Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbaran, collectively entitled Jacob and his Twelve Sons, are valued at £10m.

De Zurbaran is little known in the UK, but is a national hero in Spain, where the country's national art gallery, the Prado in Madrid, is also reported to be interested in purchasing the works.