matryoshka doll

Also known as Russian nesting doll, Russian doll, stacking doll, Babushka doll, Russian tea doll, nesting doll

Japanese-created Russian cultural icon: set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another

AI overview

A matryoshka doll is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size that nest inside one another, originally created in Japan but became an iconic symbol of Russian culture. These dolls are valued as decorative objects and souvenirs that represent the artistic tradition of combining multiple pieces into a single unified whole.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Subclass of: souvenir
Country: Russia
Image: Russian-Matroshka no bg.jpg

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Commons category: Nesting dolls
Commons gallery: Matryoshka
manifestation of: hierarchy
Unicode character: 🪆
different from: Matroska
native label: матрёшка
discoverer or inventor: Vasily Zvyozdochkin

Sources (5)

via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

A matryoshka doll or matryoshka (/ˌmætriˈɒʃkə/; Russian: матрёшка), also known as a Russian stacking doll, nesting doll, or simply a Russian doll, is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. Matryoshka is a diminutive form of Matryosha (Матрёша), in turn an affectionate form of the Russian female first name Matryona (Матрёна).

A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure, which separates at the middle, top from bottom, to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “matryoshka doll” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.