|
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 entrenched 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 lengthened chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities |
| Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian condensation 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 â a baby. |
In 1900, M.A. Mamontova, the wife of Savva Mamontov, presented the dolls at the Heavenly Body Exhibition in Paris and the toy earned a bronze medal. Soon, countless other places in Russia started management matryoshki of individual styles.