Playing with a nesting doll helps children to improve their logical thinking, motor skills, visual perception, and overall knowledge about different objects interact. Children can also develop their memory by inserting one nesting doll into another in a repeated sequence.
Our kid’s nesting dolls are recommended for children from one and a half years. As always, adult supervision is advised to avoid choking hazards.
I can recall the first time I gave my 3-year-old niece our 5 piece nesting doll set as a birthday gift. At first, she assumed it was just one doll and played with it as such.
The next day she noticed the thin line on the doll’s middle and she made her first attempt to open it. Before gifting this nesting doll to her, I repeatedly opened and closed it to loosen the line of contact.
To her biggest surprise, there was another doll inside. Then she opened the second doll and there was another doll inside it too. She was shrieking with joy the entire time till she got to the tiniest doll.
Kids huh? Sometimes I think there is nothing better than putting a smile on a child’s face.
The Big Suprise: a 30 Piece nesting doll?
As adults, we had the same experience when unboxing our first 30 piece nesting doll. Back in spring 2014, our woodcarvers were working on a ‘surprise’. Vlad and I had no idea the surprise was a big one, literally.
I came to the workshop on a fateful Monday and everyone was beaming with smiles. They seemed a little bit too happy to be at work on a Monday morning. Then I saw it; a big blank wooden nesting doll placed on a table in the middle of the workshop.
Rays of light from the morning sun pierced through gaps in the curtains and fell upon this wooden hunk, as though it was sent from the heavens. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to think at first. I assumed that it was an oversized 10 piece nesting doll.
We waited for Vlad to arrive and he was also surprised. Then we began unboxing. First, everyone including our artists and lacquer guys made several guesses. Some of us guessed it was an oversized ten or fifteen piece nesting doll set, others assumed it was one giant hollow doll.
One, two, three, four… we counted as we opened each doll. There was a lot of excitement and WOWs in the air. Unfortunately, this was not a televised moment because we didn’t have a camera crew ready. Fifteen, sixteen seventeen… We started making other guesses. I guessed twenty, Vlad guessed thirty, someone else shouted 'it’s a fifty piece nesting doll'.
We eventually counted to thirty and I held the tiniest doll in my palm. It was a memorable experience.
I bet you’re excited to open your nesting doll now or more excited to get one if you haven’t already.
Painting the Nesting Doll
We’re all art lovers and we believed this 30 piece matryoshka doll should portray something significant and exclusively Russian. Like Knights around King Arthur’s round table, our artists gathered around. Our salesmen rallied like bannermen and put in their two cents on the subject.
Making this decision proved to be especially difficult. We made a list of art themes and decided to vote on it.
Here's the list of our top ideas:
- The Russian Troika;
- Moscow;
- Saint-Petersburg;
- The Nutcracker fairytale;
- The October revolution;
- The Baba Yaga folktale.
We had a vote and the Russian troika won, I personally voted for Moscow. There was no election fraud, the whole voting process was transparent. Russian Troika won both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Finally, I had to assign the task of painting the nesting doll. It was an honor to take on such a challenge. For brevity’s sake, I will cut my story short at this point.
Stay tuned and wait for the next episode: Painting our first 30 piece nesting doll. Join our mailing list to get an alert on the next episode and other important information.
Thank you for reading, Do svidaniya!
— Yulia