A duck-shaped snuffbox carved from wood was presented to Pavel Petrovich Bazhov during the Great Patriotic War by the children’s club of the Sverdlovsk Palace of Pioneers. The organization was established in 1937, it was located in the architectural monument of old Yekaterinburg — the Rastorguyev-Kharitonov estate.

For many years, Bazhov worked with the main Sverdlovsk organization engaged in extracurricular education of children. After the release of the first tales of the Ural writer, amateur productions inspired by the tales began to appear. The drama club of the Palace of Pioneers in Sverdlovsk — led by the director Leonid Dikovsky and the artist Boris Shishkin — became the first of the amateur groups to create a stage adaptation of the tales. Most of the work for the production was done by schoolchildren.

The premiere of the play took place on May 7, 1940 at the city demonstration of Sverdlovsk schoolchildren’s art, and later the play was staged at the regional level, where the club members earned high marks and received an award.

During the Great Patriotic War, in their free time at the Palace, children were engaged not only in creative work, but also in socially useful activities. They made soap and even bricks; the souvenir snuffbox was created at the same time.

In 1944, the artists Viktor Eliseyev and Mikhail Radin came up with an idea of creating a “Bazhov’s Room” in the building of the Palace of Pioneers. They wanted to paint the walls using motifs from the tales, repeating the concept of the “Pushkin’s Room” that had already existed at that time. Pavel Petrovich was a member of the art council and participated in discussions of ideas and sketches for the decoration of the premises. On May 15, 1945, in the presence of Bazhov, a solemn opening ceremony for Bazhov’s room was held, and in the summer of that year, the writer showed it to the film crew that made the first color feature film in the USSR — “The Stone Flower”.