The figures inside may be of any gender; the smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby turned from a single piece of wood.

Malyutin's doll set consisted of eight dolls—the outermost was a mother in a traditional dress holding a red-combed rooster.

The Children's Education Workshop was closed in the late 1890s, but the tradition of the matryoshka simply relocated to Sergiyev Posad, the Russian city known as a toy-making center since the fourteenth century.

[5][7] The Children's Education workshop where Zvyozdochkin was a lathe operator received a five piece, cylinder-shaped nesting doll featuring Fukuruma (Fukurokuju) in the late 1890s,[8] which is now part of the collection at the Sergiev Posad Museum of Toys.

[9][10] Another possible source of inspiration is the nesting Easter eggs produced on a lathe by Russian woodworkers during the late 19th Century.

[3][11] Savva Mamontov's wife presented a set of matryoshka dolls at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and the toy earned a bronze medal.

Rather, they are produced using: a lathe equipped with a balance bar; four heavy 2 foot (0.61 m) long distinct types of chisels (hook, knife, pipe, and spoon); and a "set of handmade wooden calipers particular to a size of the doll".

Originally, themes were often drawn from tradition or fairy tale characters, in keeping with the craft tradition—but since the late 20th century, they have embraced a larger range, including Russian leaders and popular culture.

These include animal collections, portraits, and caricatures of famous politicians, musicians, athletes, astronauts, "robots", and popular movie stars.

Today, some Russian artists specialize in painting themed matryoshka dolls that feature specific categories of subjects, people, or nature.

Areas with notable matryoshka styles include Sergiyev Posad, Semionovo (now the town of Semyonov),[17] Polkhovsky Maydan [ru], and the city of Kirov.

[citation needed] It denotes a recognizable relationship of "object-within-similar-object" that appears in the design of many other natural and crafted objects.

The metaphor of the matryoshka doll (or its onion equivalent) is also used in the description of shell companies and similar corporate structures that are used in the context of tax-evasion schemes in low-tax jurisdictions (for example, offshore tax havens).

[36] The matryoshka or nesting doll emoji was submitted to the consortium by Jef Gray and Samantha Sunne,[37] as a non-religious, apolitical symbol of Russian-East European-Far East Asian culture.