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Busby were delighted to offer last Thursday selected contents from Stepleton House, near Blandford, Dorset. The sale attracted huge interest from both trade and private buyers, the highlight being an Irish George III mahogany wake table. Almost a dozen phone bidders dropped away, and the lot was sold online for a hammer price of £12500.

 The sale also included contents of the Romanelli collection. Roysia Romanelli was born in London in 1928, only daughter of Book illustrators John and Isobel Morton-Sale. She met her future husband, Raffaello Romanelli, at Oxford. They married in 1950 and from then onwards lived on the hills around Florence, to be near the Romanelli Gallery, in the Oltrarno district in Florence, which has seen five generations of the family.

They moved back to Devon in the 70’s, from where, now at the age of 94, Mrs Romanelli decided to downsize. The items in this sale were the result of this move, and the Italian painted furniture attracted much interest.