Art & caffeine: The Streamer Coffee Company

The practice of latte art, when decorative designs are created on the surface of a latte, is a vital component of the speciality coffee movement - which grew predominantly in the US in the 1990s and has since become a global phenomenon.

WGSN-homebuildlife profiles The Streamer Coffee Company, a brand which operates at the cutting edge of the trend.

Founder Hiroshi Sawada is a former latte art champion and cafe consultant who hails from Osaka but has spent time in Seattle and Portland. Speciality coffee is a growing market in Japan, and Sawada has brought his vision to the forefront of the field.

He was named the Millrock Latte Art Champion during the Coffeefest trade show in the US in 2008 and two years later set up the Streamer Coffee Company, which now has outlets in Shibuya and Harajuku in Tokyo.

The main attraction is the Streamer Latte, which is served in a soup bowl-sized mug providing the baristas with a suitably large canvas to work with.

Subscribers can read more about speciality coffee and cocktail trends in our new two-part report.