In 1820, Leone - the son of David Limentani - established his trading activity with a shop just beside Portico d'Ottavia. He started off selling dinner glassware manufactured by "S. Paolo Glassworks", a factory located outside the walls, near S. Paolo's basilica. To convey such heavy material in large quantities from the supplier to the shop, Leone used the horse-cars plying between Piazza Montanara (now, Piazza Campitelli) and the famous basilica.
Piazza Montanara - at the time very important for its market where all kinds of goods were on sale - was indeed the first example of a modern and very crowded business centre, as it was near to the final stop of a number of carts which conveyed farmers and traders willing to barter their products with others they needed for everyday life. Fruit and vegetables were exchanged for scrap-iron, glass, pottery, tinned iron, textiles, and new or second-hand clothing.
When the management of the firm passed on from the old founder to his son David, it was 1848, and the liberal ferment which accompanied the establishment of the Roman Republic unveiled new commercial horizons for the young entrepreneur, who extended his trade to pottery, produced mainly in Gualdo Tadino and Deruta. In 1870, just before Italy's unification, David's son, Leone (the second by this name in the family), obtained a safe-conduct from Pope Pio IX in order to travel to Perugia, and purchase his stock of pottery. This passport was required to travel inside the Papal State, and was extremely expensive for the time: two liras.
In 1920, Leonello (short for Leone, the third) was amongst the first in his trade to go to Berlin, in order to establish relations with the major Central European manufacturers. But, a very sad, painful and unpredictable standstill followed, between 1938, the year of racial laws, and 1943, when the Nazi occupation forces the activity to a complete stop for more than a year. The year 1945 sees Leonello tired, but determined to start again, to set off once more in a regained political climate where freedom and equal civil rights are restored again.