LOVE is an erotic mix-and-match toy book that marries poetry, art and design into a wayward ménage a trois.
The book consists of 17 erotic free verse poems and illustrations inspired by Japanese shunga (春画).
Japanese art-historical context
Shunga (春画) — erotic “spring pictures.” Warai-e (笑い絵) — “laughing pictures,” a historical name emphasizing play and pleasure. Enpon (艶本) — erotic books. Ukiyo-e (浮世絵) — the broader Edo-period “pictures of the floating world” tradition.
It's supposed to be toyed with. The book is cut in the middle and halves can be flipped separately, thus creating numerous new erotic combinations: mermaids making love to angels, theater combined with circus, dolls married to demons etc.
The poems mix and match too, each time producing a nuanced verse with a new meaning.
Each illustration is accompanied by a short poem by a Russian poet Andrei Sen-Senkov. Poems are in two languages – Russian (original) and English translation by Ainsley Morse.
The Illustrations
Each image — two readings
Six complete spreads from LOVE. Explore the illustrations, then flip the pages below to discover new combinations.
In Motion
See the mechanic
Mix & Match
Flip the volumes
Flip each volume independently — create your own combination
← → left volume · A D right volume
The Artist
Sveta Dorosheva
Originally from Ukraine and now based in Israel, Sveta Dorosheva is an illustrator whose work lives at the boundary of myth, fairy tale, and the quietly extraordinary. Over fifteen years of practice she has built a language rooted in Eastern European folk tradition and medieval manuscript art — dense with ornament, alive with story, impossible to take in all at once.
Her projects cross disciplines: books, film, museums, editorial, brand. She has worked with Disney/Hyperion, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Ravensburger, Capitol Records, the British Library, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage, among others.
LOVE is her first artist's book conceived entirely as a collectible art object — a project in which the binding, the case, and the mechanic are as much her work as the illustrations inside.
Disney · HarperCollins · Penguin Random House · Macmillan · Ravensburger · Capitol Records · British Library · Los Angeles Times
- 2024 World Illustration Awards Winner — Professional Category
- 2024 Hiii Illustration International Best of the Best
- 2024 American Illustration 43 Chosen Winner
- 2024 Communication Arts Award of Excellence
- 2024 iJungle Illustration Awards Silver Medal
- 2024 Victoria & Albert Museum Illustration Shortlist
Limited Edition
Get the Book
Available from Lattona on Etsy. Limited edition — order while available.