Matryoshka
Matryoshka (presumably from the pet name "Matrona, which meant" a stately lady, "") - Russian wooden toy in the form of a painted doll, inside which are similar to her dolls are smaller. The number of nested dolls are usually three or more. Almost always, they have ovoidnuyu ("yaytsepodobnuyu") form a flat-Donets and consist of two parts - top and bottom. Traditionally depicted a woman in a red and yellow scarf Sarafan.
In our time, for a list of topics are diverse: a fairy-tale characters are often subject of Russia in the image of women and families. They began to frequent and parodic character dolls depicting politicians, which was a complete departure from the canon and the meaning of dolls, based on the image of women has always been, and not men.
In the nineties of the XIX century the Moscow toy workshop "Children's Education" A. Mamontov brought from Japan figurine of a bald old man sage Fukuruma. It consisted of several nested one into the other figures. Wood turners Zvezdochkin Basil, who worked in the studio, carved from a tree similar figures, which were put into one another, and the artist Sergei Malyutin painted them at the girls in the Russian style of clothing.
Now make the dolls in a variety of workshops.
First, pick the right kind of wood. Because of the softness in the main select linden, birch, alder, or less. Trees are usually cut down in early spring, remove the bark, but not completely, so that during drying of the wood would not let cracks. Then the logs are stored and dried for several years in a well ventilated area.
By processing wood to start when it is dry, but not wet. Each blank is more than a dozen operations. The smallest doll - nonseparable - make the first one.
When the "baby" is ready to proceed to the next figure, which will go first. Harvesting of the required height is processed and cut into upper and lower parts. The first is the lower part. Then remove the timber from the inside of both sides of the second doll, so that less tightly inserted into the doll. Then the process is repeated for a larger doll, which will include the previous two, etc. The number of dolls may vary.
At the end of the process each doll cover oil varnish. After the final drying and polishing of the artist begins to paint. As the paint is used as a gouache and oil paints.