Toys are integral attributes of childhood that accompany the first steps of child’s acquaintance with the world. Some are kept in family closets as a memory for years, for instance, a time-worn teddy bear. The beloved matryoshka is the similar case. The young generation also approves of the toy and marvels at it. “About Russia Gazette” narrates the historical aspect of matryoshka.
From an Easter egg to a doll
Vasiliy Petrovich Zvyozdochkin was born in 1876 in the village Shubino of Podolsk district in the family of a peasant. He graduated from a religious parish school. However, he was not meant to be educated further: Vasiliy was the oldest child in the family, and it was necessary to provide for the family. As an adolescent he tended cattle and worked with his father in the cultivated field. By the age 22 father took Vasiliy to Moscow’s workshops, where the young Zvyzdochkin began to learn woodworking skills.
Due to a common belief, the first samples of matryoshka appeared in a Moscow workshop “Children’s Education”, owned by merchant Mamontov as there are matryoshkas in the museum collections with the stamp of this workshop. Twelve turners, including Vasily Starochkin, who was widely considered a craftsman at that time, worked there. According to many researchers, Starochkin is thought to be the author of the wooden doll with several smaller copies inside one another, or the shape itself.
Vasiliy Petrovich Zvyozdochkin
As for the other version, the “father” of the matryoshka was an artist Sergey Malyutin that made a sketch and asked Vasily Zvyozdochkin to carve the figure using it. Nevertheless, the researchers did not manage to find either the sketch itself, nor any proof that the artist has ever made it, whereas the Starochkin called himself the inventor of matryoshka.
There is a possibility that he was inspired by the idea of the Japanese puzzle-like figure, where inside a wooden Japanese man was the entire family. Regardless, probably only the “family” idea was borrowed as toys with inserts were already being produced by many craftsmen at the moment. The manufacture of Easter eggs with inserts, for example, even became a topic of discussion at the meeting of Art Council in the Handicraft Museum.
From the autobiography of V.P. Zvyozdochkin. Source: matreshka.site
Zvyozdochkin created a wooden female figure due to all Russian canons. There was a girl inside the figurine, a boy inside the girl, and a swaddled baby inside the boy. An entire family of dolls! The artist whom they were painted by was S.V. Malyutin.
Many years later various artists attempted to paint multi-figure dolls. Even the author of the famous “Girl with Peaches” painting, Valentin Serov, created some drawings for a matryoshka. There is a satirical matryoshka in the Polenov Museum depicting participants of theatre performances at the Abramtsevo Mansion dressed in Turkish costumes. The set includes the host S. Mamontov, a widely acknowledged composer N. Rimsky-Korsakov and the artist himself.
The Matryoshka doll exhibited in 1900 in Paris
In fact, matryoshkas are decorated in diverse ways nowadays. However, only Malyutin’s style of painting, which expressed a special attitude to the poetics of the folk art tradition and became the model for mass reproduction and its variations.
Pretty me, pretty am I
In 1900 the matryoshka was presented at the World Exhibition in Paris, and it won a bronze medal. And at the Milan expo in 1906 it won a small golden one. In 1907 and 1913 it adorned exhibitions of St. Petersburg, and in 1919 in Kazan. It is essential to mention that it was achieving awards everywhere.
This ordinary toy touched upon people’s hearts from the first sight! In the memoirs of Sergey Alexeyevich Ryabushkin, a hereditary master of painting, there is a story about how his father, also a toymaker, brought a matryoshka from Moscow in 1902. The reaction of all the neighbours, children and adults was an awe and admiration at each new doll emerging.
In 1905 after the workshop founders death, Vasily Petrovich moved to Zagorsk. By 1914 the skilled master was transferred to the turning shop of the Toy Industry School and appointed a teacher. Every year there were 20 specialists graduating under his guidance.
In December 1935 Zvyozdochkin was deprived of his right to vote for “exploiting the labour of others”. Fortunately, this did not lead to more serious consequences for the craftsman. On the contrary, a year later the People’s Commissariat of Education recommended to the Cooperation Council that “Zvyozdochkin who has almost 40 years of experience should be given the conditions for further successful work in his professional field”.
During the Great Patriotic War (WWII), the middle-aged master worked at the Zagorsk Toy Research Institute, and from 1949 Vasily Petrovich supervised the turner’s workshop of the local “Artistic Toy” cooperative.
Lathe operator V.P. Zvezdochkin at work
He was still working in production in his eighties. Age took its time, and with each passing year his hearing abilities deteriorated, which led to tragedy in January 1956. The master failed to hear an approaching train and was crushed under its wheels at the railroad crossing.
Zvyozdochkin dedicated his whole life to wooden toys. Not only he created matryoshkas but could carve any figure. However, matryoshka dolls made Vasily Petrovich Zvyozdochkin famous. A wooden doll has even travelled to outer space, which happened during the New Year celebrations on the International Space Station in 2021. Matryoshka dolls were given to all members of the international crew.
The matryoshka still remains a coveted souvenir for all foreign visitors nowadays.
The famous writer Ernest Hemingway also received a matryoshka doll as a souvenir from the “Soviet people”. This heartwarming and uniquely Russian toy is still a popular souvenir for foreign friends. It can’t be compared to any Barbie as our Matryoshka is much older, whereas Barbie only came out in 1959. But age is not the key point. Matryoshka with its primitive and naive appearance is a symbol of kindness that people may be missing in the ongoing era of the race for success. That is what inexplicable charm is covered in the amusing puzzle-like doll.
Marina Parenskaya