Ashley Johnson Blog Entry 4: Matryoshka Dolls

Matryoshka dolls are a set of wooden dolls that decrease in size and are placed inside one another. The dolls are usually a female figure wearing a traditional Russian jumper and the dolls are commonly painted very extravagantly. The first Matryoshka doll was carved my Vasily Zvyozdochkin and designed by Sergey Malyotin with an inspiration from the Japanese doll Honshu. The name Matryoshka means little matron which is a form of the Russian name Matryana. The doll's name is also referred to metaphorically when describing the "recognizable relationship of objects within objects". It is also considered similar to the onion metaphor, when describing that one must peel back the layers of the onion to get to the center.