London: Britain's art minister has placed a temporary ban on the only example of Salvador Dali's distinctive Lobster Telephone from leaving the country.

Michael Ellis has said the art work was in danger of being exported unless a UK buyer can be found to match the asking price of £853,047 plus VAT (£1,023,648).

The minister explained: "Salvador Dali was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. This iconic work was created in the UK, and I want it to remain here. It is important that we keep world-class art in this country and I hope a buyer can be found to save it for the nation."

The inspiration for the piece came in 1936 when the Spanish artist (1904-1989) and his patron, English poet Edward James, who was known for his promotion of the Surrealist movement, were having lobster for lunch.

Dali, easy recognisable because of his twirling moustache, got the idea when one of the discarded shells landed on a telephone.

Dali considered the whole incident very sexy because "the crustacean's tail, where its sexual parts are located, is placed directly over the mouthpiece", as the Royal Academy put it when it held an exhibition of his works last year.

In total, eleven Lobster Telephones were commissioned by James in 1938. Of these, seven were hand-painted white and four red with a black telephone. Each was unique.

It is one of the white examples that Ellis wants to save.

James owned one of the finest private collections of surrealist work - including both versions of the Lobster Telephone - at Monkton, his country house in West Sussex. Today, the majority of the white versions are in museums abroad, including public collections in Rotterdam, Florida, Johannesburg, Minneapolis and Lisbon.

The decision to defer the export licence follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.

One of its members, Richard Calvocoressi, said: "With its suggestion of both eroticism and menace, pleasure and pain, Lobster Telephone (White Aphrodisiac) is a classic surrealist conceit.....It also anticipates by half a century the confrontational but also playful sculptures made of manufactured and natural found objects by artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst."