Play Hard Work Hard: Matryoshka/ Nesting Doll

Hi, I am Kelly.

When people talk about Russian souvenirs, the first image which pops into our mind always is the Russian nesting doll. It's hard to find a symbol of Russia more popular than the traditional Russian nesting doll. These decorated wooden dolls "with a secret" are also called matryoshka dolls or babushka dolls. The simplicity and originality of matryoshka dolls attract the fans of Russian folk art from around the world.

The first Russian matryoshka

Some historians of Russian life argue that matryoshka dolls originated from Japanese traditional dolls. However it's known that Russian masters would make hollow detachable Easter eggs from the wood long before the first nesting doll was made. The first Russian nesting doll set appeared in Moscow in 1890's. It was carved by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by a folk crafts painter Sergey Malyutin. The doll set consisted of eight dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside the other. All eight dolls depicted children -- the outermost was a girl holding a rooster, six inner dolls were girls, the fifth doll was a boy, and the innermost was a baby. In 1900, the dolls earned a bronze medal at the World Exhibition in Paris. Soon after, Russian nesting dolls became wildly popular.

There is no information about who was the first to call the nesting doll by this name Matryoshka (or Matrioshka). Definitely the name Matryoshka goes from Russian female name Matriona. In old Russia among peasants the name Matriona or Matriosha was a very popular female name. Scholars said this name has a Latin root "mater" and means "Mother". This name was associated with the image of a mother of a big peasant family who was very healthy and had a portly figure. Subsequently, it became a symbolic name and was used specially to image brightly painted wooden figurines made in a such way that they could be taken apart to reveal smaller dolls fitting inside one another.

The number of nested dolls in a set could vary from two to sixty however a classic set normally included five nested figures. The carved dolls were covered with special glue to fill the cracks and reduce the roughness, after which the dolls were painted to follow a particular theme. Now, there are various images which can be painted on the dolls, no matter traditional or modern.