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Matryoshkas date from 1890, and are said to have been inspired by souvenir dolls from Japan
- However, the conceit of nested objects was familiar in Russia, having been applied to carved gawky apples and Easter eggs; the first Fabergé egg, in 1885, had a nesting of egg, yolk, hen, and chick.
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The cliffhanger goes that Sergei Maliutin, a painter from a folk crafts workshop in the Abramtsevo estate of a famous Russian industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov, saw a set of Japanese clumsy dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune
- The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually long chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities
- Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian condensation of the toy
- It was carved by Vasiliy Zvezdochkin in a toy workshop in Sergiyev Posad and painted by Sergei Maliutin
- It consisted of eight dolls; the outermost was a girl in an apron, then the dolls alternated between boy and girl, with the innermost Nesting Dolls â a baby.