The hardstone decoration of this playfully naturalistic paperweight firmly supports an attribution to the workshop of Ivan Stebakov (c. 1820-1881). Following the discovery of semi-precious stones in the Urals, various imperial and private stonecutting manufactories were established from the 1720s onwards, many of them in the mining centre of Ekaterinburg. Ivan Sergeyvich Stebakov, a bourgeois of Ekaterinburg was one of these private entrepreneurs and founded his lapidary workshop in the late 1840s. A paperweight at the Victoria & Albert Museum (inv. no. 1001-1869) with similarly cut rhodonite raspberries, carnelian cherries and kalgan jasper base was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibtion of 1867 and the museum's acquisition of the paperweight just two years later in 1869 shows the high esteem in which the quality of Stebakov's work was held by his contemporaries across Europe.
A paperweight with similar decoration was sold Sotheby's, London, 11 December 2020, lot 82.