Russian Dolls

Some of us may have childhood memories related to such dolls. I for one, remember having got Russian dolls or matryoshkas from a friend of my parents', a lady who had visited Russia. Yet they are spread all over the world these days.

Matryoshkas are a set of dolls of different sizes, decreasing from bigger to smallest, and which are placed one inside the other depending on their dimensions. "Matryoshka" (Матрёшка) derives from "Matryona", a Russian female name generally referring to a large, fat, strong woman. The number of dolls is about five or six. It usually ends with a very small doll, which does not open anymore. The artistic part is in the way matryoshkas are painted, and they generally are "dressed" in traditional costumes. This is the theme Russian dolls usually take up, but they generally may follow any theme, copying characters from political life or fairy tales.

Their history is traced back to the year of 1890, and they say these dolls were inspired by some Japanese ones. Nonetheless, the whole concept of the toys was still to be found in Russia, usually appearing in the form of Easter eggs and apples. For instance, in 1885, there was made a Fabergé egg, which nested an egg, than a yolk, a hen, and finally a chicken.

Apparently, it has all started from a painter named Sergei Maliutin. This painter belonged to a popular crafts workshop which was led by a notorious patron of arts by the name of Savva Mamontov. Sergei Maliutin once saw some Japanese dolls made of wood, which were in fact representations of the so-called "seven gods of fortune" (Shichi-fuku-jin). The biggest doll represented a bald, joyful god named Fukurokuju, who also possessed an incredibly long chin. This fellow contained all the other six divine spirits. This got Maliutin quite inspired, and thus he created a set of dolls on the very same nesting principle. Only he used eight dolls instead of seven. The dolls would variate from boys to girls, and the smallest doll was representing an infant.

Then later on, in 1900, Savva Mamontov's wife decided to participate with the dolls at an international exhibition taking place in Paris. The matryoshka got a medal of bronze. This was soon followed by a doll craze in Russia, and many such sets of dolls were made and commercialized.

Russians proved their sense of humor by depicting famous political persons by the use of matryoshkas. Such political leaders were: Mikhail Gorbachev (as the fattest matryoshka), after that Leonid Brezhnev, and then Nikita Khrushchev, Josef Stalin and at the end, the tiniest doll representing Vladimir Lenin. There are also some "updated" versions of the toy, which started with Dmitry Medvedev, continuing with Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Joseph Stalin and ending again with the same Vladimir Lenin.

Today, however, artists show their desire to discover new forms and styles of such dolls. The most spread-out themes comprise caricatures from the political life, from the artistic world and showbiz, movie stars and also animals. We could mention here that in the first part of the '90s, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed, there were plenty of matryoshkas depicting communist politicians. Matryoshka dolls that feature communist leaders of Russia became very popular among Russian people in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

These days Russian doll artists seem to rather go for more general topic like natural elements, some social categories, and so on. They all generally bear the same name of "matryoshkas", with some exceptions of course. For instance, a matryoshka representing an old woman often bears the name of baboushka/babushka, whereas those depicting an old man is called dedoushka or dedushka.

Apart from their decorative, or playing function, matryoshkas are also employed in metaphoric sense as a design paradigm called the matryoshka principle, or the nested principle. It refers to the concept of similar object within similar object. This principle can be found in many more designs of either natural, or men-made objects. Such examples are the so-called matryoshka brain, or the matryoshka media-container format. Despite that, the most charming representation of the principle remains the classic Russian doll.