Beaded Crocheted Jug Cover with 3-D Teacup

2025.013

Beaded Crocheted Jug Cover with 3-D Teacup

Unknown

Before 2020

8 inches across; teacup is 5/8 inches high and about 1 inch across, excluding handle

This crocheted jug cover has eighteen deep points around the outside edge. All but two points are weighted with yellow glass beads. It looks like two beads may have broken off; the loops that held them are still there. The center of the cover features a 3-dimensional crocheted teacup on a saucer. The thread is probably cotton. The main color of piece is off-white. The cup, saucer, and points are trimmed with an orangey-pink round of crochet. The cup handle is the same pink color.

Jug or pitcher covers were meant to keep insects out of the milk or other liquid inside the jug. Beads around the edge of the cover kept it from slipping off the jug.

I recall a time, maybe in the 1980s, when crocheted, beaded jug covers appeared some magazines and pattern leaflets. The photo-styling showed pitchers of lemonade or iced tea with drinking glasses on tables outside. The covers were to keep bees and flies out of the beverages.

In 2025, I found a few patterns online for crocheted jug covers with 3-D teacups in the center. They were not exactly like this one.

I bought this jug cover in 2022 or 2023 at a down-sizing sale a few blocks east of Mopac Highway in north Austin, Texas. The collector of the jug cover had many other interesting and beautiful textile pieces in her collection.

Suzann Thompson