The New Zealand-born brothers pushing boundaries with Melbourne lighting design studio South Drawn
“We can't name names, but we once turned up to a site and found our own light fitting installed upside down.”
No one was really surprised, either.
That's the thing about South Drawn.
The work of the Melbourne-based lighting design studio occupies a deliberate space between technical precision and organic form, where weight distribution can look "slightly wrong at first glance" even when it's structurally perfect.
Their Ballast candle collection, for instance, features a heavy metal base that counterweights hand-slumped glass sitting above it, making the glass appear to cantilever off the base in a way that shouldn't quite work.
But it does.
The fact that an installer once genuinely mistook up for down speaks to something fundamental about how Luke and Christian Mills approach their craft
“There are no visible fasteners anywhere on it, which is how we prefer to build,” design director Luke tells Place Journal.
“We look for a natural junction between materials and embed the fixing in it rather than bolting it on afterwards.
"The push is towards lights that are highly technical and genuinely decorative at the same time.
"Those two things do not sit together easily."
The Ballast candle holder
The New Zealand-born brothers built South Drawn in Melbourne, but, as the name suggests, the pull of home - in Nelson on the country’s south island - will always be there.
“We wanted a name anchored to where we are,” Luke says.
“There is always a comparison drawn between brands down here and brands from Europe and the northern hemisphere, so the southern position mattered.
“The second part is a nod to home. However the business grows or changes, we wanted the name to keep pulling back to where it came from.”
Melbourne was the obvious place because they had both made the jump across the ditch already.
But it wasn’t the only reason.
“The manufacturing was the other half of it, “Luke explains.
“We could make here (in Melbourne), and at the beginning we were placing very small orders. We were fortunate to find manufacturers willing to work with us at that volume and to see us through the growth that followed.
“We still work with them today.
“As we grow, so do the quantities we place with them.
“There is something satisfying about a relationship that repays itself that way, and the intention is to keep growing together rather than to outgrow anyone.”
Relationships are key to everything South Drawn does.
Externally. Internally. And with each other.
“Our best products have come out of strong relationships with clever manufacturers and artisans,” Luke explains.
“The advantage is being able to walk into their space, understand what they do and solve the problem together.”
Any brotherly problems?
"Being brothers means the conversation is direct and a decision does not take long to reach," Luke laughs.
In theory, the pair have defined roles - Luke leads design, Christian leads relationships and production - but there are no silos at South Drawn.
In practice, they shift constantly. Movement is encouraged.
It’s a philosophy that extends across the entire ten-person team of designers, photographers, makers and engineers, all deliberately kept close together on the same floor, where every side interacts.
“We push hard against a culture where designers create something in a digital world and then hand it to production to solve,” Luke explains.
“Our designers usually make the first pieces themselves, so they understand the idiosyncrasies of the details, how things fit together and what a decision will cost further down the line.
“That thinking carries all the way through to how a piece is assembled and installed. When there is a problem, we want people talking to each other rather than filing it.”
As a result of the deliberate strategy, like the artisans they work so closely with, key learning happens on the floor rather than at a desk.
Sometimes even material is found on the floor.
Seriously. The Point Five wall light was picked up off the ground.
Sort of.
“There was a volume of glass offcuts sitting in the workshop and the chance to remelt them,” Luke says.
“That set the limitations for everything that followed in the collection.
“The material arrived with a history rather than a specification, and it did the briefing for us.”
There are no boundaries on experimentation at South Drawn.
But there will be a measure of everything produced.
“We want a settled definition of the standard we hold our products to,” Luke says
“That sounds obvious, but it has taken years of exploration, forms and testing to be able to state it clearly.
“The cornerstone is organic and natural materials, worked properly, sitting on products that are just as refined technically.
“Everything we make from here is measured against that.”
That includes the 10 - or more - pieces coming across the next few months - the result of years of behind the scenes testing, exploration and refining that will be the “the clearest statement of that standard so far”.
Material led. Technically refined.
That’s how Luke summed up South Drawn in three words.
“I know that is four but we needed that extra word,” he laughs.
Although they are “trying to create as many limitations as possible”, there’s no playing by the standard rules here.
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