The Russian Store offers the abundant collection of genuine Russian nesting dolls. These dolls, also called Matryoshka, are very popular and endearing items of Russian folk art, fashioned entirely of natural products and hand-painted. Each nesting doll is completely unique. In the appearance of the nesting dolls offered by The Russian Store, masters embodied characters taken from life, depicting peasant-girls, fiancés and brides, as well as the modern life characters and historical persons.

Here you can buy nesting dolls ranging in size from 3 to 14 inches. All these are multi-dolls when figures are inserted one into another diminishing in size, and containing 3 to 20 smaller versions within. Open up one of them and it will reveal a set of smaller nesting dolls inside.

These attractive Russian nesting dolls are imported directly from Russia. The attention to detail and creative skill of the artists will amaze you. Handcrafted from a birch wood our nesting dolls were thoroughly decorated and lacquered by the most skilled masters from traditional Russian centres of folk crafts.

Exceptional hand-painted nesting dolls are turned mainly of birch wood, a tree that is considered one of the Russian symbols. It takes a lot of time to make these dolls. The tree is cut in the spring, stripped of its bark leaving a few rings to prevent the wood from cracking when dried. The drying logs are kept in the open for several years. They are then cut in smaller pieces, the height and the thickness of which should be equal. These pieces are used by the masters to make initial chunks by an axe giving it a shape of a truncated cone or a hemisphere. The rough work piece then is turn-worked on a lathe. All the operations do not involve any measurement and rely on master's intuition and require great skill. Then the dolls are cleaned, primed with starchy glue to make its surface smooth, polished and now are ready for painting.

After having been hand-painted nesting doll are dried for several days. Then the lacquer has to be applied. To give them the brilliant shine many different coats are needed, usually 6 or 7 layers of lacquer.

In today's world of mass-produced products, it is easy to see why Matryoshka is so popular. A few people experienced a feeling arising when one holds it in his/her hands, admires its exquisite workmanship and feels the anticipation and thrill of discovering smaller and smaller dolls hidden one inside the other. Become one of them at The Russian Store, own a Russian Matryoshka, and you will own not only a piece of Russian history, but a bit of its childlike wonder and magic as well.

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