Terhi Tolvanen is a Finnish-born jewellery artist who trained in Finland and the Netherlands. She takes the natural world as her inspiration, but brings to this traditional subject a highly innovative and radical approach. In much of her earlier work gnarled wood creates the framework and forms of her jewellery. Here the branch is made of cement, adorned with pearls which have been brutally cut and faceted to transform them into bursting or shrivelled berries. It is a jewel of disarming attractiveness, in some ways reminiscent of Lalique’s botanical jewels, made all the more compelling by the radical use of cement and the destructiveness of her treatment of the pearls.

Tolvanen has explained that the name 'Augustus' is a reference both to the August harvesting of grapes, and Roman feasting such as might have taken place under the emperor Augustus.