Russian Display Doll: "Lapti" Shoe Maker

This doll from Dymkovo, a village outside of Kirov, represents a shoe weaver, making bast shoes, called "lapti." In the 1800s, many families in Dymkovo hand-molded figures out of the local red clay mixed with sand. They baked the figures in the home stove and then painted them with tempera paint.

Bast shoes are shoes woven primarily from bast of the linden tree or from birch bark, a kind of basket fit to the shape of a foot. It is an obsolete traditional footwear of forest areas of Eastern Europe used by poorer population of Finnic people, Balts, and Slavs. They were easy to manufacture, but not very durable. Bast shoes were still worn in the Russian countryside by the beginning of the 20th century.

In modern times, bast shoes are sold as souvenirs and sometimes used in the attire of ethnographic music or dance troupes.  The word lapti is a derogatory term for cheap and short-lived footwear; an uneducated person, too poor to afford good shoes, is referred to as a "lapotnik." Like many other elements of clothing, lapti differed by region.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast_shoe http://www.russianfoods.com/showroom/product09269/vendor003E4/default.asp
http://www.sca-russian.com/costume.html