sz7.75 Felicita Eustace (1927-2016) Cochiti pueblo sterling carved turquoise and coral ring 8 grams.
Felicita Eustace
Felicita was born in 1927 and raised at Cochiti Pueblo. She learned to make
traditional pottery and storytellers from her parents. After her marriage during
the World War II years, she moved to her husband Ben’s home in Zuni. Ben taught
her some basics of jewelry-making. She sold her first ring to legendary Zuni
trader C.G. Wallace. Over the years she become and accomplished jeweler in her
own right, while developing a large following for her pottery and storytellers.
“There are always more orders for my claywork than there’s time to do them,” she
said.
The Eustaces show strong respect for the materials and time-honored processes of
their art. Felicita still makes her storytellers the traditional way. Her
jewelry features an old family design copyrighted in the early 1960s: a domed,
natural leave motif in sterling silver alongside a carved, bezeled and polished
turquoise stone. Felicita and Ben have passed their respect for quality on to
their 13 children, many of whom create their own pottery and jewelry.
Daughter Bernadette Eustace says, “My parents told us that if we were going to
do jewelry at all, we would have to do it their way, the right way. It wasn’t
the designs they were talking about, it was the technical aspects of our work:
setting stones, welds, engravings and so on. They were the ones who would be
selling these items for us, so they would make sure that a certain standard of
quality was being met.”
All precious metals are tested and guaranteed,
