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Russian Nesting Dolls - Matryoshka

Authentic Nesting Dolls (Matryoshka)

The Russian American Company in Sitka Alaska has perhaps the widest selection of authentic Russian Matryoshka dolls offered anywhere in the US. Commonly called Russian nesting dolls, these delightful hand-crafted doll sets are "stacking", mostly hand-painted wooden dolls where each doll fits inside the next largest doll, creating a series, sometimes up to 50 pieces!

They are sometimes (erroneously) called Babushka dolls in the US, perhaps because Babushka means grandmother in Russian, and many sets have a female "Babushka" painted on the largest doll, followed by decreasingly smaller "family" members represented in these multiple doll sets. Also, the colorful shawls that Russian Babushkas love to wear are often painted and prominent on authentic Russian nesting dolls. At any rate, what was traditionally a children's counting toy or puzzle, then became a kitsch Russian factory made souvenir in the USSR times, but has now been elevated to an art form by myriad talented individual and decorative artists in Russia. Learn more about the history of Matryoshka nesting dolls!

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