Joan Hassel, born in 1908, originally trained to be a teacher at Froebel College in the late 1920s before changing her career path to become a wood engraver and book illustrator. By the late 1930s the quality of her wood engraving was widely recognised. Proof prints of some work from this period were purchased at the time by the Scottish Modern Arts Association. During WW2 she stood in as a replacement tutor of Book Illustration and Drawing at Edinburgh College of Art. John Robertson Allan’s Lowlands of Scotland: a New Guidebook, with her illustrations, was included in the Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951. Her subject matter ranged from natural history though poetry to illustrations for English literary classics. In 1972 she was elected the first lady Master of the Art Workers Guild and in 1987 was awarded an OBE.