• The cliffhanger goes that Sergei Maliutin, a painter from a folk crafts workshop in the Abramtsevo estate of a famous Russian industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov, saw a immovable of Japanese awkward dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune

• The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually lanky chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities
• Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian report of the toy
• It was carved by Vasiliy Zvezdochkin in a toy workshop in Sergiyev Posad and painted by Sergei Maliutin
• It consisted of eight dolls; the outermost was a girl in an apron, then the dolls alternated between Nesting Dolls boy and girl, with the innermost – a baby.

In 1900, M.A. Mamontova, the wife of Savva Mamontov, presented the dolls at the Universe Exhibition in Paris and the toy earned a bronze medal. Soon, many other places in Russia started making matryoshki of differing styles.