16 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, JULY 3,2002
Professor owns rare KU basketball dolls
By Lauren Beatty Kansan staff writer
In Russia, Paul Pierce is really Paul Pierge, Raef LaFrentz is African-American and Billy Thomas is a ravishing blond.
Apparently Russian people aren't as familiar with University of Kansas basketball players as Lawrence residents are.
Tom Volek, associate professor of journalism, owns some Russian matryoshka dolls, commonly called nesting dolls, featuring the mugs of five of Kansas' favorite sons. Matryoshka dolls are the traditional wooden dolls that fit inside each other. Take the head off of one doll and the smaller doll appears inside.
Ryan Robertson and Jared Haase complete his set. He said the Kansas dolls were rare.
"The novelty ones are primarily for American tourists," Volek said. "You walk past a million of them. There are teams like the Chicago Bulls or the Washington Redskins, but this is the first time I've ever seen a college team. It's amazing. I never thought I'd see a KU matryoshka doll."
Volek said he didn't know who made the dolls or why they had mistakes.
Volek's daughter Sabra was the first to set eyes on the unusual dolls. She brought them home from Moscow where she studied for a year. Volek said when he traveled to Russia, the only local team he ever saw
was the Kansas City Chiefs.
Volek said he kept the dolls at home but brought them to his office in the Dole Human Development Center to show all his coworkers.
"They get a kick out of it," he said.
Maria Carlson, professor of Slavic languages and literatures, said the first matryoshka doll was created around 1891 by a Russian artist named Sergei Maliutin. They were traditionally represented motherhood, she said.
Carlson said the art form blossomed when folk artists began to create exact replicas of Maliutin's Russian peasant woman as souvenirs.
"The nesting dolls are some of the most varied and often encountered souvenirs in Russia," she said. "No longer are they just peasant women. If it comes in a series, someone will make a matryoshka out of it."
Carlson said she also had a set of Kansas basketball player dolls, but her set featured Kirk Hinrich, Lester Earl and Kenny Gregory.
"Back in 1999 one of my former students commissioned a set of KU player dolls for me," she said. "He took a picture of the team with him for the artist to work from. The artist had never done a basketball team before. I wonder if my former student started a trend."
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LAURIE SISK/KANSAI
Contact Beatty at lbeatty@kansan.com. This story was edited by Mike Gilligan.