Matrioska Matriosca Nesting Doll Russian Doll Curiosity particular News Oddities - MatrioskaOnLine
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If you are luck to go to Moscow, go in Arbat Street. It is a road closed to the traffic and is a shopping paradise, and you will find many artists selling extraordinary works.
Also in Moscow there is the museum of dolls that was opened a few years ago (2001), and retaining 14,000 works of priceless artistic and historical value. The address is:
Leontyevskiy Pereulok 7/1
103009 Moscow - Tel: ++7(495) 291 9645, ++7(495) 291 9563
Also in Moscow there is a new and huge shopping center called "Afimall City".
Within the vast halls filled with luxury boutiques and international brands there are gigantic dolls high tens of meters.
If you can not go to Moscow, at least go to Paris :-). In a central area there is a shop specializing in works of Russian art that has extraordinary nesting doll (seems he has one of 100 pieces !!!). The shop is called Peterhof.
In the photo is on display in the window of a nesting doll more than 60 pieces.
During the historical period of more orthodox communism, it was not possible for artists to paint dolls with subjects that were not those of tradition and Russian culture.
Only in the early 80s began a "ante-litteram perestrioka" that gave to the artists more freedom to express themselves with new subjects and figures.
The realization of the more valuable nesting dolls starts from the wood where the trees are selected and cut in early spring so that the wood contains a higher amount of resin. After cutting the trunks the bark is removed and allowed to dry and afterwards are stacked taking care to leave space to be able to circulate the air. The seasoning of the wood is quite long and can be up to 24 months.
The wood pieces are machined on a lathe from experts carpenter starting from the smallest piece.
It is essential that all parts of the nesting doll, comes from the same piece of wood, otherwise the expansion due to the different content of humidity and wood resin, makes pieces that do not fit together perfectly.
A friend of mine has an impressive collection of neting dolls with pieces of incredible quality and high artistic and commercial value. He has 1200 nesting dolls for a total of 7000 pieces !!! The biggest matryoshka consists of 50 pieces.
This extraordinary collection, begun in 1987, was made possible because he lives in Berlin, and in the early years of unification many Berliners in ex-Soviet area sold and sold off these typical artifacts from the Soviet bloc countries.
This is the first nesting doll built. It was realized in 1900 and presented at the World Exhibition in Paris.
It shows 8 persons of a family with the mother for the first matryoshka and younger children for other smaller until the last in which is painted a swaddled baby.
This is the disturbing work of Spanish artist Jaime Pitarch entitled "Chernobyl", which uses a traditional nesting doll deformed to invite us to reflect and to unearth the ghosts of a major catastrophe too early and too hastily removed.
This is the smallest doll of my collection. It's the latest in a 20 pieces nesting doll. The first measure 35 cm and the last in the picture a little more than half a centimeter. Despite the microscopic size, it presents a painting on its surface.
