The desk in the collection of the house-museum belonged to Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak and was part of a large bookcase. Only two cabinets and a wooden tabletop have survived to this day.

The table is displayed in the room of the writer’s sister, Yelizaveta Mamina (married name — Udintseva). She lived in the house with her children for 34 years, from 1885 to 1919.

The Mamins treasured books and taught their children to read from childhood. The first owner of the bookcase and the desk was Narkis Mamin, Mamin-Sibiryak’s father. He ordered the furniture in the 1860s and 1870s.

In those days it was difficult to buy a bookcase. Such a piece of interior design could be made optionally, so it was expensive. Besides, there were no furniture masters in the worker’s settlement of Visimo-Shaitansky plant, where the Mamins lived at that time.

As a result, the bookcase was made by carpenters from Nizhny Tagil and delivered it 40 kilometers from there to the house where the Mamins lived. However, the workshop violated the manufacturing process, which soon resulted in the surface cracking.

In 1903, the writer came from St. Petersburg to Yekaterinburg to visit his mother and sister. He wrote to his nephew Boris Udintsev after his visit, saying that he spent a lot of time by the bookcase reading books.

The piece of furniture was kept in the Mamins’ family and was handed down by inheritance. In the 1940s, Boris Udintsev presented the table to the D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak Sverdlovsk Literary Museum — it became one of the first showpieces in the collection.

Later, the cabinet was relocated to the writer’s museum in Visim, then it became part of the collection of the Nizhny Tagil Museum, and then it was brought back to Yekaterinburg.