From Florentine Bone Caskets to New Jersey Racketeering: The Evolution of Family Business
In short: Luxury goods and organized crime share a surprising commonality: the family enterprise. Whether it is a fifteenth-century workshop carving bone into ornate keepsake boxes or a twentieth-century syndicate controlling illicit markets, the family unit has long served as the primary engine for both artistic production and underground power structures.
In the late fourteenth century, the Embriachi workshop in Florence and later Venice mastered the art of mass-producing luxury caskets. Led by Baldassare degli Embriachi, the family business prioritized economic efficiency over traditional materials. By substituting expensive ivory with common cow and horse bone, they created accessible status symbols for merchant-class weddings. These caskets, often decorated with a haphazard mix of romantic narratives, functioned as both functional storage and blank canvases for family heraldry.
Centuries later, the DeCavalcante crime family in North Jersey demonstrated a different, more violent application of the family-based business model. Operating across the Hudson River from New York, the organization grew from the chaotic bootlegging wars of the 1920s. Leaders like Ruggiero Boiardo leveraged control over local wards and illicit rackets, using flashy displays of wealth—such as diamond-studded accessories—to signal status and authority within their territory.
The survival of these organizations often depended on navigating internal and external power struggles. Just as the Embriachi workshop adapted to market demands to maintain its longevity, the Newark-based factions faced constant threats from rivals. Figures like Gaspare D'Amico, who took control of the Newark family in the 1930s, faced multiple assassination attempts before eventually fleeing. These disparate examples highlight how the family structure provides a resilient, albeit sometimes volatile, framework for both the creation of cultural artifacts and the maintenance of illicit empires.
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Sources
- Source: Art Institute of Chicago — Casket · CC0 (data); description CC BY 4.0
- Also: DeCavalcante crime family
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