The Heart and Hearth of Wooden Toys

Most phenomena in Russian rural life have legends of some kind attached to their origins. In the case of the craft of wooden toy carving in the little Russian town of Bogorodskoye, there are two.

The first goes like this:

The land around Bogorodskoye rarely produced rich harvests, but Bogorodskoye villagers continued stubbornly to eke out a living as farmers. One day a family made the regular trek to nearby Sergiyev Posad to sell their meager produce in the square in front of the monastery. At their wagon, their children played with wooden toys made by their father. To the family's surprise, local merchants passed up the fruit and bought the toys. Seeing that the toys were selling better than the food, the father wisely left farming and took up carving.