Talks With The Palestinians (1994)

In this cartoon, done thirteen years ago today, on April 17, 1994, I used the image of a Russian "nested egg" doll. This kind of doll within a doll within a doll is sometimes called a Babushka doll but it is more correctly called a matryoshka.

The "Russian" matryoshka doll came to Russia from Japan at the end of the nineteenth century. Little more than 100 years ago, Russia was experiencing an economic boom and a rising sense of culture and national identity. New artistic trends were developing, and a "Russian style" was growing and focusing on the revival of traditions that were in danger of being lost. In St. Petersburg, Russia, in December 1896, an exhibition of Japanese art opened. Among the exhibits was a doll depicting a Buddhist wise man named Fukuruma. The sage was shown as a bald-headed old man with a wooden body that could be split at the waistline into two halves; nested inside were the images of the man when he was younger and bearded and still with hair on his head. The doll came from the island of Honshu; the Japanese claim that they are the inventors of nested dolls or matryoshka, but they also generously admit that the first nested dolls made on Honshu were carved and painted by a Russian monk. That first set of dolls showing Fukuruma is in the Artistic Pedagogical Museum of Toys (APMT) in Sergiyev Posad, a city in Russia that is a cultural center for the making of matryoshka dolls. -more

Traditional Matryoshka