• The epic 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 set of Japanese gawky dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune

• The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually long chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities
• Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian version 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 boy and girl, with the innermost – a baby.

Matryoshkas are also used metaphorically, as a chart paradigm, admitted as the "matryoshka principle" or "nested doll principle". It denotes a recognizable relationship of "similar object-within-similar object" that appears in the design of crowded other natural and man-made objects. Examples include the Matryoshka brain and the Matroska media container format.