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SEONAID ROBERTSON (1921–2008)
Seonaid Robertson was a senior lecturer in art education in Yorkshire and in London, who influenced hundreds of trainee teachers from the late 1940s until her retirement in the early 1970s. Teaching crafts, she told them, was crucial to the development of the imagination and the individual creativity of children. Through her seminal works for postwar educators, Creative Crafts in Education (1952) and Rosegarden and Labyrinth (1963), she reached many more teachers worldwide. The latter book explored her insights into the symbols and archetypes in the work of children when creating art—especially pottery—and links between children's art and traditional ritualistic art. She was a founder member of the International Society for Education Through Art and also of the World Craft Council, and she lectured in many countries.
Cover for Rosegarden and Labyrinth
ROSEGARDEN AND LABYRINTH
A Study in Art Education
Third, revised edition
Paperback original, $28 USD
280 pages
ISBN: 978-0-88214-001-8
Kindle/iBooks edition, $9.99 USD
ISBN: 978-0-88214-070-4
Rosegarden and Labyrinth is one of the great education books of our time. Its focus upon ancient mazes, deep holes and open pits, islands, protective enclosures, and especially gardens opens the eye and heart to the power of unconscious beauty. It is also a story of personal discovery, which led one teacher to a richer and fuller conception of her profession and so of life.
 
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Few books are truly classic, truly timeless—and yet readable. Rosegarden and Labyrinth achieves this distinction by virtue of the author’s love for the poetic vision and the psyche of her charges. Seonaid Robertson’s lucid insight into how mythic symbols actually work their healing in young disturbed souls is imbued throughout with love.
—JAMES HILLMAN
A work of profound philosophical and spiritual value.  No teacher (and, one would like to say, no statesman) can afford to neglect its  message.
—Sir HERBERT READ