Pellerino: four generations and the renewal of an ancient trade
The beginnings and foundation of the “Ditta”
It was the end of the 19th century when Giovanni Pellerino was travelling around the various bookbinders as a representative and supplier of leather, parchment skins and similar products. As the years went by, his business expanded, became specialised and modernised, locating its offices in Via dei Mercanti 9, in the historic Palazzo Romagnano. The Great War slowed down business, but the company (ditta) managed to hold out and in 1922 it was registered in the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Craft and Agriculture registers as “Ditta Pellerino di Giovanni Pellerino”, in the category "trade and sale of bookbinding materials".
The “Arsenic and Old Lace” Sisters
When Giovanni died in 1926, his wife took over, and as she was not as enterprising as her husband, she decided to leave the management of the business to two nieces, who were sisters, and had the Pellerino surname. Those who knew them in the 1950s remember them as being "no longer young. One of them was very thin, while the other was slightly plumper, they dressed in black, with a white collar and a black velvet ribbon with a pendant medal around their necks", and they were compared to the protagonists of "Arsenic and Old Lace". In the early 1960s, the business changed ownership and family, becoming the “Ditta G. Pellerino di Campo Gabriella”.
From the economic boom to the present
In 1963, the shop moved to the premises at the intersection of Via Mercanti and Via Monte di Pietà, with no less than eight shop windows overlooking the street. The goods on display were not only limited to bookbinding material, but also included German and Scandinavian imports and patterned paper, both from the East and from the West overseas. In 1982, the business was taken over by Gian Carlo Saracco and his wife Romana, continuing the tradition of selling paper, cards, canvases, paper party supplies, lined boxes, and products for DIY restoration enthusiasts.
1 May 2021: history continues
The quantity of products, their evolution, the variations dictated by current fashions and by customer needs, have created the business as it stands in 2021.
Today the business is owned by Ilaria and Alessandro, who are ready to pick up the baton and carry on the Pellerino tradition with their own mark of renewed creativity.
Traditional products and innovative handicrafts, chosen with taste and a careful eye on current trends, are waiting to be discovered in the shop.