Crusader Table by Minjae Kim

Crusader Table belongs to a small body of work in which Kim translates devotional architecture into domestic scale. The top is built as a low cross, four broad oak planks extending outward from a central, recessed well inset with darker sapele. The whole rests on a single squared oak pedestal, planted on the floor like a column shortened to coffee-table height. From above, the form reads unmistakably as a crusader’s cross; from the side, as an altar.

The piece sits firmly within Kim’s wider practice, which moves between sculpture, architecture and use. Trained as an architect at Columbia GSAPP and previously a designer at Studio Giancarlo Valle, he builds furniture as if it were small architecture, works that carry the weight of ritual objects while remaining unambiguously functional. Crusader Tableshares its vocabulary with the companion Crusader Lamp (2024), a totemic floor light in oak that operates as the vertical counterpart to the table’s horizontal cross.

Kim (b. 1989, Seoul) lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens.