In the basement of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, just outside the Case Trading Post, a woman sits at a table, carefully fingering clay to sculpt the base of a pot.

She is Rose Williams, a Navajo potter whose works are collected throughout the Southwest and as far as the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. As she works, fans, collectors and reporters surround her, watching her work and asking questions that her great-nephew, Ronald Martinez, must translate into Navajo for her to answer.

The 94-year-old is credited with keeping the creation of Navajo pottery for ceremonial use alive when all others had switched to making it as an art form or for daily use.

"She's considered the matriarch of Navajo pottery," Martinez said.

Though her grandmother taught her the skill at a young age, Williams' career didn't start until later in life when her husband died about 40 years ago. In an effort to support herself, she began creating pots and selling them, often to traders.

The skill, Martinez says, has always run in the family. Williams had 15 children, and she taught all of her daughters the Navajo style of pottery. Her daughters taught their daughters, who in turn taught their own daughters.

In the 1980s, Williams started presenting her work at museum shows with her daughter Alice Cling. They both began getting more and more recognition for their pottery, and in this way, Williams made her living.

The process of creating the pots is a long one. Half of the work, Martinez says, is getting the clay ready and refined. Williams used to dig the clay herself, but now, because of her age, her family helps her with this first grueling step.

If the clay is to be used for a traditional pot, she mixes the clay with volcanic ash and water. If she will be making a ceremonial pot, she crushes shards of broken pottery from Anasazi sites and mixes it in to make the clay waterproof.

She then rolls the clay into thumb-width coils and pinches them together to form the pot, frequently dipping her fingers in a bowl of water to keep both her skin and the clay wet. As Martinez explains the process, this is the step Williams is on for her current pot.

"I'm going to take my time making this pot," she says to Martinez in Navajo, which he then translates into English for the others. "I'm not sure what it's going to be."

Williams then uses smooth stones to polish the pot. Each pot is usually polished about six times. Then the pot is fired in a pit in the ground for several hours. Afterward, when the pot is still hot, she uses a long stick with a cloth wrapped around it at the end to swab the pot with piñon tree sap.

"As tough as it is to make it, I enjoy every step of it," Williams says, smiling, adding another coil of clay to her current project and working it with her hands.

Though she follows this traditional process, Williams has in a way made it her own. She sometimes makes very large pots — the largest for sale in the Case Trading Post stands 19.5 inches tall — which Martinez says is a break from tradition. She also started signing her work in the late '80s in response to their growing popularity. She didn't know how to sign her name, so her daughters taught her how to write "RW" to initial them. This was also a break from tradition because in the Navajo culture, pottery was mostly seen as communal, not as individual property.

Williams' work will be at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian this weekend for the Navajo and Pueblo Folk Art Show through Sunday. The Case Trading Post will be selling her pieces from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Williams herself will be there today for demonstrations.

An onlooker wonders aloud why she's still working at the age of 94. Martinez smiles, getting ready to translate the question into Navajo.

"She's going to laugh at that," he says.

He's right. After hearing the question, she chuckles quietly and then says in Navajo, "This is what I know the most. It's a way of life for me. For most people, when they stop doing something productive, they start going to rest homes. I'm not sure why my relatives keep telling me to stop."

As she rewets her fingertips and reaches for more clay, Martinez smiles.

"I don't think she'll stop," he says.