The lighter that Pavel Petrovich Bazhov used in the last years of his life is a Soviet copy of the famous Austrian IMCO lighter. Practically the oldest company in the world (the second oldest after the American one from New Jersey) for the production of these accessories was founded in 1907. At first, it produced buttons, and in 1918 it began to specialize in devices for making fire — the company has had more than 70 models. One model was especially popular in the USSR, and in the 1930s several Soviet factories produced similar ones.

Once, a friend of Bazhov’s, the novelist and screenwriter Boris Polevoy, called this lighter with a cylindrical body “extraordinary”. It really was of a rather unusual shape — according to the contemporaries of the Ural writer, it was made from a cartridge.

In a letter, Bazhov described his two lighters with his characteristic irony. The second lighter is displayed in the House-Museum:

Bazhov had lung problems since his youth: bronchitis, inflammatory conditions, and cancer at the end of his life. However, he could not quit smoking, which he complained about in his diaries:

“It is absolutely necessary to quit. Especially for people of my way of life, who in fact have not so much a life, but a smoking break. A perpetual, meaningless, not justified by any hint of pleasure smoking break, as this smoking habit has turned into a mechanical process: lighting a cigarette and breathing in smoke has become a habitual gesture that you can’t get rid of.”