Sometime in the late 19th century, Russian artist Sergei Malyutin drew the very first matryoshka character (sometimes spelled matrioshka, matryushka, matreshka, or matriochka), the young maiden who would become synonymous with Russian nesting dolls. Stories of the goddess Jumala, worshipped in the ancient Ugric culture of the Ural Mountains, may have provided inspiration for Malyutin’s character. Jumala was a sort of supreme being or Mother Earth figure thought to contain all life, and according to legend, she was physically embodied by a set of three hollow gold statues—one inside the other—hidden somewhere in the forest. It’s also possible Malyutin sketched his idea after seeing a nested set of hollow Japanese Daruma dolls displayed at the Moscow toy workshop of Savva Morozov. Regardless, Malyutin took his drawings to Vasily Zvezdochkin, a skilled woodcarver, and had him turn the first set of Russian nesting dolls on his lathe. This original set of stackable dolls was painted in muted tones and featured six female figures in kerchiefs, one little boy, and a tiny swaddled baby at its center. The outermost character held a black rooster under her arm and the smallest girl was depicted sucking her thumb. Today, the set resides at Russia’s National Museum of Toys in Moscow. During Malyutin’s time, Matryona or Matriyosha was a common girls’ name, drawing on its maternal associations (the root, “mater,” is the Latin word for mother). Malyutin’s nested dolls were given an endearing form of this name and thus linked to motherhood and fertility in title as well as function, since the largest female doll contained several “children” within herself. Eventually, the iconic matryoshka dolls also became a common gift for newborn babies and were culturally linked to the notion of Mother Russia, a spiritual embodiment of the home. (Separately, foreigners sometimes mistakenly refer to Russian nesting dolls as babushka or babooshka dolls, using the Russian word for grandmother.) Antique nesting dolls were typically made from linden wood that was turned on a lathe into simple curving cylindrical forms that narrow slightly at their neckline and base. Most sets contained 3, 7, or 12 total dolls and were not made from a single piece of wood. Stacking dolls made during the latter half of the 20th century often included nested variations of an identical man, woman, or child in traditional garb. Though first established as a folk art in Russia, nesting dolls were also crafted in Soviet-controlled republics like the Ukraine as well as other nearby countries including Poland, China, Japan, and India. By the 20th century, craftspeople in the town of Semyonov had begun to imitate Malyutin’s nesting dolls, creating the more familiar, brightly-painted matryoshka dolls we think of today. These early sets typically featured a girl in a red sarafan or traditional Russian dress holding a black rooster on the largest doll, then at least one boy, another smaller girl or girls, and finally a baby at the center. Most nesting dolls from Semyonov show the young maidens wearing a kerchief tied beneath their chins and holding a bright bouquet of flowers across their front. However, other variations made in Semyonov included such oddities as bowling sets, where the largest doll contained two wooden bowling balls and 9 solid figures to use as pins, and counting sets, which held ten solid dolls of equal size. Counting sets have also been decorated with characters other than matryoshka, such as chefs, cats, and chickens. As the popularity of this Russian folk art spread, different communities of craftspeople put their spin on the nesting dolls they made. Vintage nesting dolls from the town of Kirov often had orange-colored hair and held grapes or bunches of berries; those made in Kalinin had features outlined with “poker work” or woodburned grooves; dolls produced in the Ukraine were frequently made in perfectly conical or bullet-shaped forms; sets sold in Russia’s southernmost region were painted with Asian-influenced facial features and geometric-patterned clothing styles. Stacking dolls crafted in Brest, Belarus, were typically finished with a high-gloss lacquer and many were modeled on male figures like fisherman, woodcutters, and cosmonauts. In the village known as Polkhovsky-Maidan in the nearby Voznesensky District, the nesting dolls were taller and thinner, often depicted with solid-painted eyes and black curls of hair appearing from beneath their veils. Polkh variations on the standard dolls include a sewing kit set and a hollow tsarina box whose high collar can be used as an egg holder. Meanwhile, in the town of Sergiyev Posad (previously known as Zagorsk), some of the earliest sets are distinguished by their unfinished and unpainted exteriors, with the only decoration provided using a woodburning technique. Even when painted, most antique nesting dolls from Sergiyev Posad were done in muted colors with simple designs and typically included both male and female figures in each set. Thousands of Russian stacking dolls have been crafted with individualized characters, such as those depicting shepherdesses with reed pipes, office clerks with their ink pots, or boyars (noblemen) and their wives in fur hats and coats. Some of the earliest nesting-doll sets portrayed characters from Russian fairy tales, while others had more adult themes, such as commemorating national events, like the 1909 set celebrating the centenary of writer Nikolai Gogol’s birth. Throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st, the souvenir appeal of Russian nesting dolls has endured the country’s ups and downs—tons of the classic dolls were produced for the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and more recently, artisans have updated the form to portray international political figures like Donald Trump, whose stackable dolls sometimes include a tiny Vladimir Putin at their centers.