Arts and crafts flourished in the towns and villages which surrounding the monastery. Wooden toys known as "Trinity" toys became particularly popular. According to a legend, the first "Trinity" wooden toy was made by the Prior of the Monastery, Sergius Radonezhsky.
Sergiev Posad was and now has once again become a colorful, tarditional and truly Russian town. The Monastery lent a unique specialness to it. A huge marketplace in front of the Monastery was always full of different peoples, merchants, monks, pilgrims and craftsmen were always to be found there.Today the artists, suvenir sellers and the tourists make up the crowds there.
Artists made the first painted matryoshka dolls of Sergiev Posad just for fun. It is this reason why these dolls are so expressive and have won the admiration of adults and children everywhere who have seen them. In the initial period of matryoshka doll development specific attention was paid to faces of the matryoshka, but the clothes were not painted in great detail. Such dolls depicted different characters and social types: peasants, merchants, warriors and noblemen.
The faces of the early matryoshka dolls of Sergiev Posad were oval and rather severe or strict. The heads of many matryoshka dolls were greatly enlarged and it is this reason why a face dominated a body. These dolls look primitive because of this disproportion but at the same time they are very expressive. The first political matryoshka doll, the prototype of famous "Gorbi doll", was born in that time. Matryoshkas like the "German doll" (because Germany was the political Governor of old time Ukraine) which was a part of Russian Empire gave a grounding to the artists to design modern political dolls.
Sometimes matryoshka dolls portray a whole family with numerous children and members of the households. Many matryoshka dolls were devoted to historical themes. They described boyars (old Russia's freemen and minor noblemen), legendary heroes bogatyrs (warriors), some dolls were devoted to characters of fairy tales and characters taken from literarure.
The matryoshka of Sergiev Posad usually contained anywhere from 2 - 24 pieces. The most popular dolls consisted of 3, 8 and 12 pieces. In 1913 a 48-piece matryoshka doll made by N. Bulichev and was displayed at the Exhibition of Toys in St. Petersburg.
Development of matryoshka dolls depended greatly on a wood-turners' skill. Highly skilled masters turned matryoshka dolls with very thin sides, which was/is considered to be a special art of wood-turning. Actually painting was considered to be secondary. Professional artists who painted the first turned dolls did not treat it seriously enough. It was for them an entertainment. There are some matryoshkas-caricatures in the Museum Estate of Polenovo. On the other hand there were many independent workshops of Sergiev Posad where skilled artisans worked and they crated their own style of Russian matryoshka doll.
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