Matryoshka Dolls

2000? Russian matryoshka set of 5 dolls representing GGE. $45 from shisa-630 through eBay, May, '22. This is a beautiful matryoshka. The three largest dolls are particularly well executed. I may be missing something, but I do not believe that the sequence of dolls is meant to tell this fable. They seem rather to isolate the characters involved and present them individually. The tragic note of the fable comes in in the axe in the farmer's hands in the second doll. Might the last doll suggest something like the result of the fable: we have a golden egg, and that is all that we have?

1997? Russian matryoshka set of 5 dolls Aesop’s Fables.” 5.75” high. Signed perhaps “Aesop’s Fables. 5 Pieces. Sergiev Possa 97. M. Yudin.” Unknown source. This is another lovely signed Russian matryoshka. The rear halves are uniformly two-tone brown with decorative lines. The coloring is strong, with emphasis on purple. The five pieces, in order, picture FC; GA; “Two Frogs”; TMCM; and WL. A quick look online could find no second copy, though it brought up many other representations of FC.

1995? Yugoslavian set of 5 dolls including, on the outside doll, a representation of FS. $20.50 from Diane Woodword, Glen Ann, MD, through eBay, July, '05. The elaborate development of the characters' clothing on the outside presentation of FS suggests the folktale that FS is in Eastern Europe. We see the moment in which the stork presents food in a tall vase to the fox. The artist chooses great local clothing for these animals! The stories represented on the other four dolls are presumably folktales. The smallest seems to represent a mustached man about to strike a dragon. The second smallest features a goat and a lobster. The third has a fox holding afish riding on a wolf, and the fourth pictures a woman holding a staff and a fisherman in a boat. In each case, there is a concern to fill the "empty" side of the doll with engaging landscape consistent with the scene on the front.

2020? Set of five fable matryoshka dolls. St. Petersburg: Marzipan. 3,900 Rubles from Livemaster, Moscow. August, '20. Here is a lovely set of matryoshkas illustrating five of Krylov's fables. Found by chance for about $50. I presume that it is one of a kind because the "Livemaster" website now marks this item as "sold." FC is well known to us, as is WL. The third doll features the ass and the nightingale. The ass tells the nightingale in the third that he could learn a few things from the rooster! In the fourth, a clever pug gets his reputation as courageous by seeming to take on a fight with an elephant that he knows will never happen. The elephant will not have anything to do with him! The last is the monkey with spectacles on the top of his head instead of in front of his eyes. As the signature on the bottom of the largest doll indicates, this set is handcrafted. A large oval scene in the largest part of the doll presents scenes from FC; WL; "The Ass and the Nightingale"; "The Elephant and the Pug"; and "The Monkey and Spectacles." The stupid ass asks the nightingale to sing, and the bird's song enraptures every creature in the forest. The ass praises his song and then tells he could learn something from the rooster's beautiful singing. The knowing nightingale simply leaves without answering a comment so ludicrous. The little pug barks at the huge elephant with impunity because he knows that the elephant will not bother to retaliate. The elderly monkey is advised that glasses could help her failing vision. She gets several pair and puts them all over her body but finds that they do not help and dashes them against the wall. Here she seems to have them on upside down.

1993 Russian matryoshka set of 10 dolls representing FS. $75 from josephcustomcues through eBay, Dec., ' This remarkable matryoshka, signed "Surko L"on the bottom of the largest doll, by the artist, is, according to the Ebay seller, an "authentic hand painted Russian Nesting Doll" originally purchased for $900. As the seller claims, the colors are indeed vivid. 11" tall. The diminishing dolls tell the story of FS, which is beloved as a folktale among Russians. All that is left after the the unfortunate tit-for-tat encounter is an empty soup bowl and an empty vase. Though the display below allows us to follow the story, viewers are reminded that each successive doll is about an inch shorter than the preceding doll. Click on any doll to see a full-screen image.