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Russia's cheery matrioshka dolls get own museum
MOSCOW, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Russia's most famous souvenir, the rotund, rosy-cheeked matrioshka doll, has been given its own museum.
Tucked in the back of Moscow's forlorn Museum of Popular Art, the Matrioshka Museum houses hundreds of brightly coloured dolls, with dozens of smaller figures nestling inside them.
Matrioshkas, made out of lacquered birch wood, traditionally portray the smiling, pretty faces of scarved peasant women -- but in more recent years have been painted to represent everyone from John Lennon to former President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The mother of all matrioshkas, a giant red figure at the centre of the exhibition, is about 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) high and has 50 smaller figures inside it.
"We had the idea of opening the museum a year ago, when we set up an exhibition for the doll's 100th anniversary," museum director Larissa Solovyova said, hugging a large yellow and red matrioshka.
"It's a very modern, lively museum, where people who like matrioshkas can meet and talk," she said.
The dolls that now decorate Russian souvenir stalls were originally from Japan's Honshu island. They were brought to Russia just over a hundred years ago, where they were adopted by an artistic movement promoting a return to popular culture.
The dolls -- which originally depicted bald-headed Buddhist monks -- were dressed in gay, flowered peasant outfits and given the first name most popular with Russian farm workers at the end of the 19th century -- Matriona or Matriosha.
Matrioshka roughly translates as "little Matriosha."
During the Cold War years, the matrioshka's hidden figures became a powerful symbol of the secretive Soviet society for many Western diplomats and commentators.
The museum steers clear of unorthodox dolls depicting glum-faced Soviet leaders or popular rock bands widely available on Moscow souvenir stalls, but tourists looking to ring the changes will be able to spot innumerable Father Christmases, Peter the Greats and even a representation of the last of the Romanovs -- Russia's ill-fated royal family.
"I gave a master class on matrioshkas in America and the students said the doll was as much American art as Russian art," artist Maria Steltsova said. "They said there was a matrioshka in every bathroom in America!"
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