In 1890, at the Children's Education Workshop on the Abramtsevo estate outside Moscow, wood turner Vasily Zvyozdochkin carved a set of eight nesting wooden figures based on a design by painter Sergei Malyutin. The outermost figure was a round-faced peasant woman in a traditional sarafan holding a black rooster. Inside her were seven progressively smaller figures — alternating boys and girls — ending with a tiny swaddled infant.
This first matryoshka was inspired by a Japanese nesting doll (fukuruma) representing the Seven Lucky Gods, which had been brought to the workshop by Savva Mamontov's wife, Elizabeth. But Malyutin reimagined the concept entirely through a Russian lens, dressing the figures in the folk costumes of different Russian regions and giving each a distinct personality through their painted expressions and accessories.
The dolls were exhibited at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where they won a bronze medal and captured the imagination of European collectors. Within a decade, workshops across Russia — particularly in Sergiev Posad, Semyonov, and Polkhov Maidan — had developed their own distinctive styles, and the matryoshka had become an enduring symbol of Russian folk art and craftsmanship.
