CULTURE PEARLS : Russian Dolls Nest in Nook

It’s surprising enough to find a shop specializing in Russian matryoshka, those little wooden dolls nestled inside one another. Far more surprising, however, is the name of the shop: South American Corner.

“For years I carried only South American goods,” explained Julietta Lewis, a merchant at Old World Village in Huntington Beach. “Little by little I started to carry whatever caught my eye. The thing that caught my eye was Russian dolls.”

The store is now as Russian as it is South American, so Lewis, who came here from Peru in 1961, recently changed the name to South American Corner International.

Not so long ago, Russian matryoshka mostly depicted doe-eyed women wearing scarves and surrounded by yellow flowers. Today, the subjects range from Gypsies to tipsy monks, from American presidents to Russian czars, from chickens to gods of world religions. Among matryoshka offered at Lewis’ shop recently were sets depicting a traveling circus, icons and U.S. dollar bills.

Lewis credited the breakup of the Soviet Union with the genre’s new range of expression.

“Before, they couldn’t even paint religious images, and now you see Nativity scenes,” she noted. “You see modern politicians, and they’re satirical. You even see pop stars and athletes.”

Such wooden dolls first appeared in Russia in the 1890s. According to Lewis, Matryoshka was a common female name before the revolution of 1917. Because of the name’s derivation from the Latin mater, or mother, and because the dolls reveal smaller dolls inside them, they’ve traditionally served as symbols of motherhood and fertility.

The least expensive doll set in Lewis’ shop is $6. For those interested in creating their own, she sells a set of seven unpainted dolls for $25. At the other end of the spectrum is a group representing Nicholas II and his family--which she considers “museum quality”--for $3,000.

The largest doll in that set represents the czar himself and is 10 1/2 inches tall. Out of the display case she brought what surely appeared to be the smallest of the dolls, which she then opened to reveal another doll inside. And another. And another.

“Still you can see the work,” she exclaimed as she continued to extricate the dolls, pausing only to retrieve a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass when she almost lost one. “The detail is unreal.”

There are 22 dolls in all. The smallest doll in the set measures three-sixteenths of an inch.

“It’s like a grain of rice!” Lewis pointed out. “It’s beyond my imagination that they can even paint these teeny-weeny little dolls. You look at the little ones with a magnifying glass, you see they have eyes, they have a little babushka, they have everything! I go every day with my glass and I wonder at the beauty.”