Laura Potter's work continues to address jewellery's capacity to create and communicate identities. Recently this has involved explorations into the location of 'value' and the extent to which a 'valuable' object may be protected from loss or damage, and the relationships between 'finish' and ownership, where an object may appear incomplete at its point of departure from the maker.

Laura is conducting an AHRC funded research project (due for completion 2007), which aims to explore the means by which individuals store or safeguard jewellery of personal significance. The project focuses on women who regard particular pieces as a means by which they can access and evidence their life experiences, but which are not worn, and therefore not directly associated with their physical identity. The project seeks to investigate the hierarchies of importance placed on jewellery items, and determine which factors have the greatest effect upon an object's symbolic value.