Leon Norell is the son of the late Henry and Malka Norell. A wheat farmer in Persia in his youth, Henry Norell went to England in 1925, swiftly to gain prominence among the community of Oriental carpet merchants trading at the famous Port of London Authority bonded warehouses, off Bishopsgate, in the City. Built for the East India Company by Clive of India in the 18th Century, the 'PLA warehouses’ as they came to be known, were an entrepôt for tea, coffee, port, vanilla, spices, resin, peacock feathers and myriad other exotic products from the East. They were also the Oriental carpet centre of the West, to which international buyers would throng. It was from that warehouse that, breaking a cartel by a number of merchants, his father became one of the principle suppliers to Harrods, Liberty