Vintage Matryoshka Nesting Dolls

This is a medium size, seven doll set of Matryoshka dolls (literal "little matron" dolls) depicting Mother and Child (Mary and Jesus). They are also known as stacking dolls, nesting dolls, and simply they are a set of hand crafted and painted wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another.

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. This set has the largest doll at 23 cm height and 10 cm diameter.

The first forms of these dolls were decorated as a woman, dressed in traditional peasant attire, later forms included other cultural themes as in this case, religious. Contemporary subjects are much more varied. We have dated this particular set to the 1970's, depicting Mother and Child (Mary and Jesus). It is in the tradition of icon painting but is slightly more stylized.

This is an undamaged and complete set, the joints are all perfectly sound, snug fit and ease of separation