Matryoshka doll

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A matryoshka doll or matryoshka (; Russian: матрёшка), also known as a Russian stacking doll, nesting doll, or simply a Russian doll, is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. Matryoshka is a diminutive form of Matryosha (Матрёша), in turn an affectionate form of the Russian female first name Matryona (Матрёна). A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure, which separates at the middle, top from bottom, to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on. The first Russian nested doll set was made during the 1890s by woodturning craftsman and wood carver Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo. The dolls continue to be mass-produced to this day. Traditionally, the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a Russian sarafan dress. The figures inside may be of any gender; the smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby turned from a single piece...

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