List 3 most recent posts from a custom category taxonomy ?

Hi there,

I have created a custom post type (named project) and a custom taxonomy (named work) to group these projects by medium – 3d design, graphic design, etc.

On my portfolio index I am trying to get it to list the 3 most recent posts from each custom taxonomy term. Eg. 3 posts from 3d design, 3 posts from graphic design and so on.

Is there any way I can do this without having to hard-code the terms in?

So far I use this loop to query all posts from all ‘work’ taxonomy:

<?php
				$loop = new WP_Query( array(
				'post_type' => 'project',
				'taxonomy' => 'work',
				'term' => '',
				'posts_per_page' => 9
				) );
				$postcount = 1;
				$row = 1;

				while ( $loop->have_posts() ) :  $loop->the_post();
				echo '<div class="project row-' . $row;
				if ( $postcount == 1 ) { echo ' first'; }
				echo '">';
				if ( $postcount == 3 ) { $row++; $postcount = 0; }
				$postcount++;
				?>

				<?php
					if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) : ?>
					<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" >
					<?php the_post_thumbnail('project-thumb'); ?>
					</a>
					<?php endif; ?>
				<?php the_title( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="' . get_permalink() . '" title="' . the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) . '" rel="bookmark">', '</a></h2>' ); ?>

					<div class="entry-content">	

						<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
					</div>
					</div>
				<?php endwhile;

Appreciate any help.. I am trying, but I feel this is above me and I’m not sure where to start.