Nesting Dolls

A set of matryoshkas consists of a frame figure which can be pulled apart to communicate another figure of the same ilk inside. It has, in turn, another figure inside, and so on. The number of nested figures is mainly five or more. The shape is mostly cylindrical, rounded at the crack for the head and tapered towards the bottom, but dinky else; the dolls have no hands (except those that are painted). Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a sarafan, holding a rooster. Inside, it contains other figures that may be of both genders, habitually ending in a baby that does not open. The artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be extremely elaborate.

The article goes that Sergei Maliutin, a painter from a folk crafts workshop in the Abramtsevo estate of a famous Russian industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov, saw a intent of Japanese heavy-handed dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune. The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually long chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities. Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian adaptation of the toy. It was carved by Vasiliy Zvezdochkin in a toy workshop in Sergiyev Posad and painted by Sergei Maliutin. It consisted of eight dolls; the outermost was a girl in an apron, then the dolls alternated between boy and girl, with the innermost – a baby.