"Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world. Matryoshka dolls are a Russian folk art tradition dating back over a century. These hollow wooden figurines, shaped like squat bowling pins and painted ornately, come in sets that nest neatly one inside another. On a recent visit to northeastern China, I learned that many nesting dolls are made in one small township here Yimianpo."
"It's about 125 miles from the border with Russia. In the late 19th century, when the Russian Empire started building rail lines to expand eastward, Yimianpo was a key stop. The matryoshka or tao wa, as they're called in China followed. A workshop owner invited me into his carving shop. There, amid thigh-high piles of wood shavings, I watched an artisan hammer a block of linden wood from a nearby forest onto a lathe."
Matryoshka dolls are a Russian folk art tradition more than a century old. These hollow linden-wood figurines are shaped like squat bowling pins, painted ornately, and sold in nesting sets. Many nesting dolls are produced in Yimianpo, a small township in northeastern China roughly 125 miles from the Russian border. Yimianpo became a key stop when Russian rail lines expanded eastward in the late 19th century, and the matryoshka, called tao wa in China, followed. Local workshops mount linden blocks on lathes and artisans shape them with gouges and chisels amid piles of wood shavings.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]