 Bogorodskaya Toys
The history of Bogorodskaya toys starts from a legend. The story tells of a poor peasant family that lived in a small village Bogorodskoe (some 40 miles outside of Moscow; founded in the late 16th century) and had many kids. Their mother made a doll for them from cloth rags. But it lasted only a couple of days. The kids ripped it into pieces. So she wove one from straw. That one didnt last very long either. So the woman took a piece of wood and cut a wooden toy for them, which the children called Auka. They played with it for quite a long time, but eventually got bored with it and their father took it to a fair. At the fair he met a merchant that liked the toy and ordered several hundred of them from him. Since then, the story says, most villagers became toy makers |
