7.5 RUSSIA

5

RUSSIA

DOLL WITHIN A DOLL

It is difficult to believe that the nesting doll, what some might consider the embodiment of Russian culture, was just born some 100 years ago. Nesting doll history began in the 1890s. The smoke and noise of Russia’s industrial revolution inspired a romantic notion: Was the key to peace and harmony a simpler way of life? Artists turned to Russia’s peasantry for the thread that would unite the country with its past.

he country was no T if the doll were hollow and had more toys hidden inside of it. Whatever the case, the result of their efforts was the very first nesting doll, The Rooster Girl. She came from the Russian countryside bearing a black rooster and dressed in a kerchief and work apron. The wooden doll was hollow on the inside and could be opened up to reveal a second doll. This doll held another, which held another, and stranger to woodworking. Russian another, until a seemingly endless number of craftsmen had been producing nesting siblings had emerged from within the first. toys such as Easter eggs for several Each child carried an item telling of peasant years, but the life: a basket, a sickle, appearance of the a bowl of porridge, a nesting doll remains broom, and a younger a bit of a mystery. She brother in tow. Nestled was created at the in the center was a

Children’s Education baby swaddled in a

Workshop-Salon in patchwork quilt: hope

Abramtsevo, a toy for the future in the company founded promise of generations by patron of the arts, to come. They named

Savva Mamontov. her Matryoshka, or little

Some say the idea mother. was inspired by a nesting toy featuring The art form caught on the Seven Gods quickly. In 1900 one of Fortune that of the Russian wooden

Mamontov’s wife dolls was taken to a brought back from a show in Paris, where trip to Japan. Others it received an award. insist that the doll was a result of the After such a favorable introduction, many workshop’s constant demand for new artists and lathe operators began to devote products and was of the artists’ own their time to making matryoshka dolls. invention. The memoirs of one of the Zvyozdochkin, himself, dedicated the rest of era’s most esteemed lathe operators, his life to teaching others the carving aspect

Vasilii Zvyozdochkin, make no of nesting doll production. The nesting mention of the Japanese toy. However, doll shape and concept became a canvas for he does describe an attempt to create renderings of political figures, illustrating a solid wooden doll at the Children’s Russian fairy tales, creating religious icons,

Education Workshop-Salon, writing and much more. Virtually any image one that he and his colleagues decided their could imagine can be adapted to its versatile creation would be more interesting shape.