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Considerations
Nesting doll philosophy and metaphor for life
A mystery wrapped in an enigma
As I wrote in the history page, the origins of this pleasant and unusual object are far away. The nesting doll crossed the stormy century inside it was born in the Russia of the Tsars and through unscathed for the long Communist period, to the present day while staying true to its traditions, its forms and its drawings.
How this was possible it is one of the mysteries that encloses the nesting doll that being born as a toy already embraced itself the mysterious nature of the "game" that is a form of expression and communication of the most advanced forms of life, and even more "pure" because it related to childhood.
Archetype of universal mother
Science, with documentary evidence collected, and the two great monotheistic religions with their dogmatic principles, agree that the whole humankind begin from a single woman born 150,000 years ago in the current African continent, and from which we all descend.
The nesting doll can be seen as the archetype of this "primordial Eve" because from this seed (and not coincidentally the smallest matryoshka is so called) are born all the children follow one to another until the present days.
Whole humanity itself can be seen as a huge nesting doll, because within every single can find something of those who were before him, and without him could never exist, and so on from doll to doll until "the original input", when all began.
The tree of Life
As I wrote above, the smallest is called "seed", and from small seeds big trees are born.
If we cut the trunk we can see the circles indicating for every year the tree has grown to reach its current size, and a open nesting doll with all its pieces inside, makes it perfectly the image of concentric circles all indicate the evolutionary process and how each outermost element is not a something alien and separate from the others, but it is a piece of the growth.
For similarity, the tree metaphor that grows with its circles and the open nesting doll with his pieces inside, it can be transported to the human being; the baby becomes a child, then boy and then a man, but each of these evolutionary steps does not replace the previous ones, leaving just a memory that slowly remove from the minds, but inside every man, consciously or unconsciously, are always present the "pieces" previous up to the first one with its genesis.
Ying e Yang
This ancient and fundamental concept of Chinese philosophy we can find in the nesting doll.
Yin and yang are opposing but interdependent because in each of them there is the other's root. Yin merges into yang as the smallest doll merges into that bigger, and so that everything is harmonious the balance of the two symbols must be perfect, as well as the nesting doll that in order to hold each other must have pieces which are joined and is perfectly fit between them.
Yin and yang is also transformation (the night into day, cold into warm ...) as transformations are all the pieces that make up a nesting doll.
How a collection is born
My first nesting doll was given to me by my father when I was 7 or 8. It was a Christmas gift not to those made at random, but it was me to want one.
Why a nesting doll and not a train or a little car I do not know.
I do not know what unconscious engine pushed me toward this singular request, but from this moment I had my first nesting doll that I still keep.
After that moment there was no talk about nesting dolls until 1989, when nearly 30, I spent the new year in Istanbul and touring around the bazar I saw a nesting doll that I bought.
Even now I do not know the reason because i bought a nesting doll and not a carpet or a pistachios box, but this became the second nesting doll of my collection.
Then, unable to travel, the collection suffered a stop along a few more years, up to the mid 90's while traveling by car, I was attracted by a motor home stopped on the roadside with a coffee table in front with a few objects among which I seemed to recognize a nesting doll.
I turned the car and I turned back. There was a married couple coming from a European country that was trying to sell the poor things to earn some money.
I bought the nesting doll, was modest quality, but in thet time I was not yet able to judge them, and from this moment slowly started my collection.
In the following years I came into possession of other nesting dolls brought as a gift from friends who had bought on their trips abroad, but the "real" collection, mades of pieces of art and of a certain value, started in the early years of 2000 with this extraordinary tool that is the internet that allows you to see and have the whole world into your home.
