The description 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 plant dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune. The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually expanded 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 Nesting Dolls 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 recycled metaphorically, as a design paradigm, known as the "matryoshka principle" or "nested doll principle"

• It denotes a recognizable relationship of "similar object-within-similar object" that appears in the blueprint of many other natural and man-made objects
• Examples include the Matryoshka brain and the Matroska cable container format.