Shonto Red:
Four Voices from the
Rose Williams Legacy

Chimayo Trading Staff Report | November 2025

In the low cedar hills north of Shonto Trading Post, four women still shape the earth the way their mother taught them: by hand, without a wheel, and always with a prayer.

Come in to Chimayo Trading Del Norte so see our collection of Navajo pottery in person, or visit us online at chimayotrading.com.

Susie Crank
8.75″ x 6.25″
$450

Susie Crank (B. 1966), Alice Cling(B.1946), Lorraine “Rain” Williams (1955-2024), and Sue Ann Williams are all accomplished Navajo (Diné) potters from the Shonto/Cow Springs area of the Navajo Nation. They share a close familial connection through the renowned matriarch of modern Navajo pottery, Rose Williams (1915–2015), the quiet revolutionary who pulled Navajo pottery back from near extinction in the 1970s.

Susie Crank
8.25″ x 6.5″
$450

Where earlier generations had abandoned clay for wage work or wool, Rose insisted that pots were part of being Diné. Rose taught traditional techniques like hand-coiling, burnishing, and pine pitch coating to her descendants.

Susie Crank
6” x 6”
$375

She gathered her children around a shallow pit of red dirt, showed them how to coil, scrape with a yucca leaf, burnish with a river stone, and fire in juniper bark until the vessels blushed deep crimson and black.

Susie Crank
8″ x 6.25″
$450

Today the four carry distinct signatures, yet every piece begins the same way, kneeling in the same clay bank Rose used for half a century.

Alice Cling
4.75” x 3.75″
$210

Susie Crank favors tall, confident cylinders that catch dramatic fire clouds, the smoky ghosts of burning cedar. Alice Cling is known for impossibly thin walls and a mirror-like polish that turns a simple bowl into liquid light. Lorraine “Rain” Williams, once married into the family, brings a bolder hand: melon shapes, sharp shoulders, and a willingness to let the fire run wild. Sue Ann Williams works smallest and most traditionally crafting seed jars and wedding vases sealed with glistening pine pitch that still smells of the forest when you lift the lid.

Alice Cling
6.5” x 6.75″
$675

Together they have shown at Heard Museum Guild fairs, earned ribbons at Santa Fe Indian Market, and watched their work enter permanent collections from the Smithsonian to the Museum of Northern Arizona. More importantly, they have taught nieces, granddaughters, and neighbors, proving that a tradition can survive not through museums but through family.

Sue Ann Williams
4.25″ x 5.25″
$180

This family has played a pivotal role in revitalizing Navajo pottery, with Rose Williams as the central figure passing down skills to these women and others in the Lók’aa’dine’é Clan. Their works often feature polished redware vessels with fire clouds and traditional forms, drawing from local clays near Black Mesa.

Sue Ann Williams
4″ x 5.5″
$180

On a warm October afternoon you might still find them under the brush arbor behind Susie’s house, laughing, arguing over whose turn it is to gather cow chips for the fire, and shaping the next generation of Shonto red—one coil, one prayer, one pot at a time.

Sue Ann Williams
4″ x 6.25″
$240

Lorraine “Rain” Williams
21″ x 18″
$3800

Lorraine “Rain” Williams
9” x 6”
$240

Lorraine “Rain” Williams
9” x 6”
$270

Lorraine “Rain” Williams
9″ x 5.75″
$270

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Come to the gallery to see where History Meets Art in Taos..

#1 Saint Francis Church Plaza
Ranchos de Taos, NM 87557

575.758.0504

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Contact us for the evaluation and resale of your collectible art.
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Contact us directly to discuss and evaluate your collection. If you’re an artist, contact us about the possibility of selling your art on consignment or direct wholesale purchase.

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