A Child Chosen - Perspectives of an Adoptive Parent

The Traditional Matryoshka

by Marcie on December 15th, 2007

Traditionally, the Matryoshka tells a story, one of a Russian fairy tale. This is the one I purchased for AJ when we were in St. Petersburg on our first trip to Russia. He looks at it almost everyday.

‘Nutcracker’The history:
Matryoshkas are a relatively new Russian handicraft; the first one dates from 1890, and is said to have been inspired by souvenir dolls from Japan. However, the concept of nested objects was familiar in Russia, having been applied to carved wooden apples and Easter eggs; the first Fabergé egg, in 1885, had a nesting of egg, yolk, hen, and crown.

The story 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 set of Japanese wooden dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune. The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually tall chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities. Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian version 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.

In 1900, M.A. Mamontova, the wife of Savva Mamontov, presented the dolls at the World Exhibition in Paris and the toy earned a bronze medal. Soon, many other places in Russia started making matryoshki of various styles.

Tags: fairy_tale, matryoshka, Russia, st_petersburg

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POSTED IN: Countries and Domestic, Holiday, Russia, Uncategorized