Vulgar Teacups
When you’re sipping on some piping hot tea, you must do so in style. Dallas artist Caitlin Schart has created scandalous ceramics for the consumption of tea, hot chocolate and coffee. As its name suggests, Vulgar Tea Cups is a collection of mugs and saucers with salacious messages, suitable for a grown-up party or for chatting among friends.
Caitlin first came up with the idea for Vulgar Tea Cups in September of 2017. A friend of hers had found a collection of her grandmother’s mugs and Caitlin wanted to touch them up.
“I had seen mugs that had messages on them like ‘Slay all day,’” Caitlin says, “but I wanted to go a little bit darker.”
She painted the phrase “Kindly fuck off” onto a mug and then decided to share it on Etsy.
”Five minutes later, it went crazy, and I just realized that people were into this sort of thing,” she recalls.
The mug was later shared on BuzzFeed and Reddit, and Caitlin had found overnight fame. Since then, Caitlin has gone on to sell over 6,500 tea cups. Before launching Vulgar Tea Cups, Caitlin had been working in the service industry, serving tables and hosting at restaurants. She decided to take a break after giving birth to her son.
“Right around the time he turned two, I realized I was not cut out for the stay-at-home-mom thing,” she recalls. “I had to find something creative to do, so that’s kind of how it all took off.”
Although she was hesitant to launch Vulgar Tea Cups, she learned to follow her heart. She encourages all young women entrepreneurs to do the same.
“Always trust your gut,” she says. “I used to tell people my ideas and sometimes they would make cringy faces and turn them down. I would right away assume that everybody else was smarter than me. Once I started trusting myself, that’s when everything kind of fell into place.”
Among her most popular designs are a cup and saucer pair in which the cup reads “You’ve been poisoned” and the saucer reads “bye.” When she’s not drinking tea or coffee, Caitlin enjoys drinking Kruto Vodka cocktails.
“Anywhere I can order Kruto, I can,” Caitlin says. “I love how it makes things smoother.”
Vulgar Tea Cups are available for purchase at vulgarteacups.com, as well as Favor the Kind in Dallas and MartinPatrick3 in Minnesota. Check Vulgar Teacups out on Instagram!
