Dorothy Woollard began etching as a student of Reginald Bush at Bristol School of Art in the early 1900’s and exhibited for the first time in 1910. In 1913 she moved to London to take up a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, under Frank Short. She worked for the Admiralty during the First World War, so did not graduate until 1923, though she had been elected an Associate of the R.E. in 1916 and became a Fellow in 1925. She contributed a miniature etching for Queen Mary’s Dolls house.