Lignum Sanctum is a minimalist table by the Melbourne-based designer and artist, Drew Abrahamson. Crafted for HARD, an exhibition celebrating new works by queer designers during Melbourne Design Week 2024, the table serves as Abrahamson’s love letter to the queer community.

Lignum Sanctum takes inspiration from one of Abrahamson’s decade-old sketches that depicts the queer feminist icon and Sydeney-based performance artist, Betty Grumble, as Venus, the goddess of love. Rerefencing the cloud-like bodily figures in this illustration, these forms are transformed into interlocking silhouettes, each assembled limb by limb and reanimated in walnut burl veneer. Viewed from above, the figures intertwine in a sensual embrace.

The table’s name, derived from Latin, is a nod to the trees of the Garden of Eden (Lignum scientiae boni et mali) and the notion of sanctuary (sanctum). At once sculptural and functional, Lignum Sanctum speaks to the interplay of sensuality and sacred space.