Faye Quandelacy, a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, is known throughout the country and abroad for her small fetishes and fetish necklaces.  Of special interest to Faye is the sculptural depiction of the three stages of womanhood:  the Maiden, the Mother, and the Wise Elder. 

Faye Quandelacy and her brothers and sisters are a close-knot family of carvers who first learned their craft from their grandfather, Johnny Quam, and their parents.  Faye’s mother, Ellen Quandelacy, is well known for her horse fetish necklaces (the Zuni do not usually carve domestic animals).  Faye attended the Institute of American Indian Arts where she studied pottery, sculpture and jewelry.  Most of her carvings are corn maidens, six directional animals and fetish necklaces.

The “grandmother necklace” a fetish necklace designed by Faye Quandelacy, combines one or tow fetishes made by each of Ellen Quandelacy’s 11 children.  “It’s actually a mother necklace,” says Faye.  “I don’t know where the name “grandmother” necklace came from, because we made it for our mother.  I asked everyone to donate one or two of their carvings, and I added some beads and some of my own carvings, and strung it up.  After that, a lot of people were trying to buy it off her, and she said no—it’s my necklace!”  Faye began to make other grandmother necklaces to sell, buying the additional carving from her brothers and sisters.  “If you purchase one, you have one or two of every one of our carvings.”

Another of her ideas is the “corn maiden fetish”, a small woman in the shape of an ear of corn, sometimes with children in tow.