Welcome to the debut issue of Love & Theft! In this journal, we make space for the seemingly inexhaustible dialogue between source and material. Think Hamlet, a play with striking similarities to Amleth, a tale by Danish historian Saxico Grammaticus; Brahms’ first symphony was described by contemporaries as “Beethoven’s Tenth”; in the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley grafted scientific lectures—some borrowed verbatim—onto a ghost story...

"My intention is not to lift an image and simply displace it into my artwork, but find ways of altering it, manipulating and recontextualizing it so that it becomes something different. Working in my sketchbook and reverting to repeating a song lyric on the page is more out of improvisation fueled by a habit that feels almost like a diary. Many times I’ll incorporate text and lyrics because they are the closest way to expressing how I feel at the time."

Death remembered the time before the souk. He remembered when the mud huts first appeared in the bulrushes along the Tigris. He remembered when the caliph Al-Mansur commanded the great city’s rise from the rose-pink soil, an impressive feat of human will. After a particularly busy work trip––filthy Europeans and their plagues––he had returned to Baghdad and discovered, to his delight, that the coppersmiths had constructed this narrow alleyway and lined it with their wares.

LEMEAL is a 3D design studio founded by siblings Mary and Davit Jilavyan. Selections published here—"concepts in photorealistic mood" as Mary describes them—draw inspiration from music, film, literature, and visual art. LEMEAL has been featured in Dezeen, designboom, and Aesthetica Magazine, among other venues.