Each week, I fret a lit­tle bit about find­ing enough things for a Thurs­day Round Up. This week, how­ever, I had an abun­dance in choices and had a lot of fun researching!

Nest­ing dolls, or more com­monly known as Matryoshka dolls are tra­di­tion­ally a wooden doll with five dif­fer­ent fig­ures. There is a large fig­ure (the matri­arch — grand­mother — babushka), and each sub­se­quent doll is “nested” inside the other. The out­ward design on each doll fol­lows a theme, but can vary on what that theme is, exactly. The first mak­ings of a Matryoshka dolls depicted fam­i­lies and peas­ants, and later lead­ers of the Soviet Union.

Mod­ern day nest­ing dolls sim­ply ref­er­ence the shape of dolls past. For instance, both Friends With You and Pik­sel — Kopter have added and sub­tracted from the orig­i­nal shape. Friends with You has turned their doll into an alien-like crea­ture — it’s like a pod.

I love how so many of the dolls of the present destroy the my con­ven­tions. I often think of these dolls as being rigidly pat­terned and very tra­di­tional. It’s nice to see them break my expec­ta­tions and be so illus­tra­tive and lively.

Upon research­ing the cul­ture that’s been built around nest­ing dolls, I found this inter­est­ing post on If It’s Hip, It’s Here. Also, thanks to some of the good folks on Twit­ter (@npldave, @hellojenuine, <a http://twitter.com/lizzystewart”>@lizzystewart) for help­ing me the the hunt­ing and gath­er­ing of the dolls.

From top to bot­tom, in order: Mogu Taka­hashi // Irina Troit­skaya // Friends With You // Ben Javens // Pik­sel — Kopter