The aim of this research was to write a 5000-word biographical, critical and contextual study for the monograph on the contemporary British silversmith, Michael Rowe. The accompanying text in the book was a 2000-word analysis of Rowe's work by architectural theorist Richard Hill. There was also a comprehensive chronology of images of his oeuvre. The significance and originality of the research were based on the fact that this was the first book on Rowe, giving wider public access to the work and thought of this internationally pre-eminent silversmith and to the craft of silversmithing in the modern era. The research thus contributed new knowledge on the recent history, practice and meaning of applied arts. Extensive primary research was based on conversations with Rowe and friends, colleagues, gallerists, scholars, collectors and curators, and studies of public and private collections of Rowe's works in Britain and abroad. Secondary research explored the theoretical and historical framing of applied arts practice in Rowe's lifetime and in the Modernist period, to establish the significance to Rowe of Constructivism, Cubism, Surrealism, Deconstruction and Minimalism, the origins of 'form generation' and 'conditions for ornament', key themes for Rowe, and the nature of function and the role of geometry. The research further engaged with phenomenological and aesthetic theories, especially of Kant and Heidegger, two influential thinkers for Rowe. Research into Rowe's work on the colouring, bronzing and patination of metals and on site-specificity further aimed to elucidate Rowe's impact on the science, aesthetic, and function of metalwork in our time. The research was funded by the publisher, Lund Humphries, and by Arts Council England and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The book was published to coincide with a major retrospective during 2003-4, and book and exhibition reviews were published in American Craft and Metalsmith in the USA, Goldsmiths' Review and Crafts in the UK and in Schmuck magazine in Germany.