When a furniture restorer was working on an old bureau, he discovered an astonishing artefact from Pitcairn Island in a secret drawer.

The piece of bark cloth made from a tree on the South Pacific island – where the mutineers from HMS Bounty settled – is thought to be the islanders’ version of paper or primitive fabric and dates to 1837. It has a note attached.

The note, which is likely to be from the time, was attached with a needle and says the cloth was ‘manufactured on Pitcairn Island by the descendants of John Adams the mutineer, from the bark of a tree.’

Mutiny on the Bounty was an uprising on board the British ship HMS Bounty. She had been sent to the South Pacific to collect breadfruit and take the cargo to the Caribbean. However, in 1789 on the way to the West Indies, there was a mutiny on board led by Fletcher Christian against the captain William Bligh.

Christian had met and married a Tahitian woman while collecting the breadfruits, while others had become close to local women. During the mutiny, the Bounty was captured by Christian and 22 others and they returned to Tahiti, before setting sail when a Navy ship arrived to capture them.

Eventually the ship landed on Pitcairn, where the mutineers began a new life. It was far from idyllic and the settlers began killing each other. When, in 1808, a US ship found the community, only John Adams remained of Bounty’s original crew.

The descendants of the mutineers still live on the island which is administered from New Zealand.

The rare find is to go under the hammer at Duke’s auction house in Dorchester on 8 December with an estimate of £5,000 to £10,000.

Art adviser, Guy Schwinge, said: “It was quite an incredible find and fortunately a note attached states what it is and where it is from.

“There are only two other examples known about and one is in the British Museum that has a similar attached note and is dated 1837.

“It seems likely they were collected at the same time which was just eight years after the death of Adams who passed away aged 61 in 1829.

“He had four children so it is likely that one of them made this bark cloth that was collected by a passing ship.

“How it came to be hidden inside the bureau will probably remain a mystery, but it is a wonderful item from one of the great maritime tales.

“The descendants of the Bounty still live on the island, the capital of which is Adamstown, named after the longest-lived mutineer.

“The story of the mutiny continues to fascinate, and items connected with it are highly collectible.”