The fireplace belonged to the Yekaterinburg house of the engineer Nikolay (Nicholas) Ipatiev, where the Royal Family stayed from March 31 to July 16, 1918. It was made of cast iron at the Kasli Plant in the Chelyabinsk Region. Ipatiev House was one of the most comfortable mansions in Yekaterinburg at that time, and the black cast fireplace was installed in the dining room in the first floor. In this very dining room Emperor Nicholas II, his Family, and close associates were spending most of their time during their confinement.

The general structure of the fireplace and its decorations are typical for the Baroque style: the sides of the portal are adorned with satyr masks, and the fireplace insert is ornamented with a seashell motif. The attached openwork fragments demonstrate floral patterns. Today, fireplaces of this type are called Ipatiev (Rus. Ipatievsky). They were originally produced at the Kasli Plant in the second half of the XIX century, and were listed in catalogues as Fireplace №5.

The Royal Family was quartered in the two-storey Ipatiev House, which on this occasion was dubbed The House of Special Purpose (Rus. abbreviation DON). The mansion was enclosed with a double fence, its windows were painted white, and it was forbidden to open them even for ventilation. Armed guards were on watch inside and outside the house day and night.

The Imperial Family was treated almost as if they were in jail: their food supply was limited, they were not allowed to walk outside for more than an hour a day, and having visitors was banned. Bolsheviks were inspecting all letters written by the Imperial Family members. On the night of July 16-17, Emperor Nicholas II and his Family were shot in the basement of the Ipatiev House.

Museum employees removed the fireplace from the mansion on September 13, 1977, because it had been decided to demolish the building. By order of Alexander Balchugov, director of the Sverdlovsk History and Revolution Museum, the fireplace was first taken to the church on the Ascension Hill (Rus. Voznesenskaya Gorka), and then it became part of the museum collection. Apart from the fireplace, only small details remained from the Ipatiev House: window bars, a piece of a border edging, moulding and wallpaper fragments. The museum at the Church on Blood exhibits the bark of a tree that grew near the house where the last Russian Emperor was assassinated.