Featured Italian colonial unit ?

Hoping someone could shed some light on this piece.

An silver cigarette case with an unit name. Looks around ww1 era to me, just a simple 800 hallmark inside.
11/7.5/1 cm, about 170 grams.

Is it from an Ascari unit ?

 

Great enameling.

 

Written in the enameling is -- 5th Indigenous Battalion, Eritrea. So yes, an indigenous colonial unit.

 

Here are the colors (top left) ...
https://martinplaut.com/2014/11/18/ethiopian-troops-serving-with-italian-invaders/

 

even better carving !

 

What a beautiful piece o silver!

 

Stunning.

The 800 fineness mark was used during both Italo-Abyssinian wars.
The single mark usually means the piece dates from 1872-1933, but some later makers also punched the fineness mark only, without a national mark.

 

One of the more amazing pieces of silver I've seen here-congrats gigi.

 

That is beautiful work..

 

Thank you guys

 

What flamboyant taste. Would love to have seen the owner. ML?

Debora

 

I think it says MZ.

 

MZ I think too.
Did a little bit of digging about the unit since i posted.

IF the person who had it commissioned it himself, it could have been made any time before ww1, i say before the war because the general feel of it, the scrollwork, the thickness of the silver , post ww1 items are a bit more on the budget side of things. Especially in Italy.

The unit name enameling looks a lot like a row of ribbons from awards and not like unit colors. Something tied to the owner maybe.
Carving the blank, inscribing the unit nomenclature and then doing the policrome enameling around all that must have been something worth watching.

The other option is that it could have been a presentation piece.
Found an interesting bit in the unit history .
No proof sadly but it fits the timeline.
https://www.giorgiopozzieditore.it/pdf/Journal-of-African-History-11-2013.pdf

"Similar concerns resurfaced in July, when the Fifth battalion was rewarded for its distinguished contribution to the Libyan campaign with a bonus trip to Italy. The peoples of Naples and Rome, the two cities visited by the Fifth, mobbed the askari at every opportunity and generally exhibited all the symptoms of what a caustic Il Messaggero journalist called ‘acute askarophilia’

 

You're right. I see it now. MZ. I wonder if this fellow could identify who it belonged to. Suspect he'd be interested to see it.

https://armsbeadsandcloth.unipv.it/persone/massimo-zaccaria/

Debora