Matryoshka doll
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A Matryoshka doll or a Russian nested doll (often incorrectly referred to as a Babushka doll - babushka means "grandmother" in Russian), is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside the other. "Matryoshka" (Матрёшка) is a derivative of the Russian female first name "Matryona", which was a very popular name among peasants in old Russia. The name "Matryona" in turn is related to the Latin root, "mater" and means Mother. So the name is closely connected with motherhood and in turn the doll has come to symbolize fertility.
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[edit] Overview
A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure which can be pulled apart to reveal another figure of the same sort inside. It has, in turn, another figure inside, and so on. The number of nested figures is usually five or more. The shape is mostly cylindrical, rounded at the top for the head and tapered towards the bottom, but little else; the dolls have no hands (except those that are painted). Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a sarafan. Inside, it contains other figures that may be of both genders, usually ending in a baby that does not open. The artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be extremely elaborate.
Matryoshkas are often designed to follow a particular theme, for instance peasant girls in traditional dress, but the theme can be anything, from fairy tale characters to Soviet leaders.
[edit] History
Matryoshkas date from 1890, and are 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 chick.
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 long 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 and painted by Sergei Maliutin at the Children’s Education Workshop-Salon in Abramtsevo. It consisted of eight dolls; the outermost was a girl holding a rooster, six inner dolls were girls, the fifth doll was a boy, 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.
During Perestroika, the leaders of the Soviet Union became a common theme depicted on matreshki. Starting with the largest, Mikhail Gorbachev, then Leonid Brezhnev (Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko almost never appear due to the short length of their respective terms), then Nikita Khrushchev, Josef Stalin and finally the smallest, Vladimir Lenin. Newer versions start with Dmitry Medvedev and then follow with Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Joseph Stalin and then Vladimir Lenin.
Modern artists create many new styles of nesting dolls. Common themes include animal collections, portraits and caricatures of famous politicians, musicians and popular movie stars. 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. Today, some Russian artists specialize in painting themed matryoshka dolls that feature specific categories of subjects, people or nature.
Areas with notable matryoshka styles include Sergiyev Posad, Semionovo (now the town of Semyonov), Polkholvsky Maidan, and Kirov.
[edit] Matryoshka metaphor
Matryoshkas are also used metaphorically, as a design paradigm, known as the "matryoshka principle" or "nested doll principle". It denotes a recognizable relationship of "similar object-within-similar object" that appears in the design of many other natural and man-made objects. Examples include the Matryoshka brain and the Matroska media-container format.
The onion metaphor is of similar character. If the outer layer is peeled off an onion, a similar onion exists within. This structure is employed by designers in applications such as the layering of clothes or the design of tables, where a smaller table sits within a larger table and a yet smaller one within that. See also onion routing.
[edit] Matryoshkas in popular culture
- The Higglytown Heroes characters are matryoshkas.
- An episode of The Amazing Race included the players looking for clues hidden among several thousand matryoshkas.
- Australian composer Julian Cochran wrote a Russian inspired composition titled "Wooden Dolls" about a group of Matryoshkas communicating.
- In the 2008 film Transsiberian, a set of matryoshkas plays a prominent and unexpected role in the plot.
- They were used in a frequent segment on Sesame Street in a counting lesson.
- In the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the final, titular mech is structured similarly to a matryoshka doll, in that it contains each of the previous iterations of the series' mech Gurren Lagann nestled inside each other.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Matryoshka doll |
- RusslandJournal.de - Matryoshka information about Matryoshka
- History of Nesting Dolls History, Creation of, and Cultural Impact of the Nesting Doll
