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Art lovers are on a mission to raise $1 million to keep the last big work by esteemed master craftsman Geoffrey Hannah, OAM, close to home.
Known as the Hannah Cabinet, Mr Hannah named it after his family.
Mr Hannah's previous big piece, the Australiana Cabinet, was bought by a private investor and now resides in Belgium.
But the Hannah Cabinet is even bigger and is the master craftsman's opus.
Christies Auction House described the Hannah Cabinet as a modern-day equivalent of the 18th century Badminton Cabinet. The Badminton last sold for close to $52 million.
Christies Australian director, Ronan Sulich, said it was a remarkable piece of cabinetry.
"It's fantastic timber work, it's also inlaid with semi-precious stones and he's also used amazing gilt-bronzed mounts to ornament the columns and the handles and on many different levels the workmanship is quite remarkable," Mr Sulich said.
The big question is what is a cabinet such as the Hannah Cabinet, worth?
"I would think it's worth one-and-a-half million dollars, something in that sort of area," Mr Sulich said.
Mr Hannah just wants to make his money back on the cabinet.
It took six-and-a-half years to make, has 92 drawers and includes 34 types of timber, four rare species of shell, and 17 types of precious and semi-precious stones.
"It's almost like a sculpture or a painting, you marvel at the workmanship that has gone into it, the aesthetic subtleties of the inlays on the doors, the iconography that he's used all the way through it," Mr Sulich said.
"It's a really amazing thing that a furniture collector or a museum should own."
One of the cabinet's many secret drawers even contains a piece of fabric from the bedroom of Marie Antoinette at the palace at Versailles, France.
What makes the cabinet even more precious is the connection to family.
It was the love of family that led Mr Hannah to call it the 'Hannah Cabinet'.
"I wanted a name that meant the love of a close family, which I've had all my life," he said.
For these reasons the cabinet is named after Mr Hannah's mother, father and brother.
The love of one family has become the love of many as a public campaign grows to keep the cabinet in its hometown of Lismore in northern New South Wales.
Brian Henry was one of those behind the acquisition effort and believed it would be a first for a regional gallery in Australia.
"This will be a unique opportunity for regional Australia because never before has a million-dollar work of art, created by a local master craftsman, been displayed in its home town."
In the first quarter of 2018, Lismore's regional art gallery attracted more than 42,000 visits with many people there to see the opening of the cabinet, which happens once a week.
The community can sponsor a piece of the cabinet, adding their family name to the work, which is becoming a memorial to those of significance in our lives.
The Grose sisters saw their donation as way to make a connection between their family and the art world.
"It's a great honour to be involved with something of this calibre and our parents, Jim and Diana Grose, would be really chuffed to be associated with this work of art," said Susan Stewart, the eldest of the three sisters.
For generations, the Hurford family has been associated with the timber industry.
Andrew Hurford felt he was honouring that association with his sponsorship.
"We appreciate the beauty of timber and what Geoff has achieved here is just the highest level of that, it's beyond anything that I could imagine," Andrew Hurford said.
His father Rob Hurford mourned the loss of the previous cabinet, The Australiana Cabinet, which now resides in the Grand Place, in Antwerp, Belgium.
"Australia missed the last one, and this is the last one, and it's the biggest and it's so special," Rob Hurford said.
Christies Director Ronan Sulich agreed.
"It's an amazing opportunity because he's not making any more, so it's sort of the end of the line for a skillset that one person won't have in the future," Mr Sulich said.
Mr Hannah said the Hannah Cabinet had taken the best and last out of him.
At 70 years old, he said he was finished with work on a large scale.
"As you get older you can't do the things you did, you can't go carrying wood forever on your shoulder and cutting it up and turning it over and lifting this component up — physically you can't do it," he said.
"So, I've got to go smaller."
The public effort to keep the Hannah Cabinet has so far raised $250,000 towards the $1 million price tag.
Topics: art-history, timber, library-museum-and-gallery, charities-and-community-organisations, lismore-2480
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