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The Russian word matpewka is spelled in English three ways:  matryoshka, matrioshka, and matreshka.  (The Russian letter E is pronounced "yo".)  The word comes from the common peasant female name Matryona, which is derived from the word for "mother", and the dolls have been a symbol for motherhood and fertility. 

The first nesting dolls were made in China in the early 1800s, where the tradition of nesting boxes had been started hundreds of years earlier.  The idea came to Russia in the 1890s, when a group of artists was reviving native culture and folk traditions.  One artist, Sergei Malyutin, probably inspired by a Japanese example, designed the first set of Russian nesting dolls, the largest, a peasant girl with a babushka (kerchief) on her head.  The dolls were carved and turned on the lathe by a master wood-carver, then painted.  This first matryoshka was the inspiration for the folk artists in Sergiev Posad - where the dolls in this picture were hand-made.  Many regions took up the art, each developing a particular style.  Most of the dolls are maidens, but some sets have families, characters (like St. Nick) or animals. 
     Nesting dolls are made in many countries now, including India, Poland, Japan, and China, but the Russian matryoshkas are still the best known. (Taken from the Authors Note in "The Littlest Matryoshka" by Corinne Demas Bliss - order this wonderful book from our ' Bookstore') 

All donations go to the 
Dar Gift Foundation which raises money to build American-style orphanages in Russia