Chelsea Arts Club

I have just finished the second Cormoran Strike detective story by Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling), The Silkworm. A report will follow shortly. But for now, I wanted to showcase a members-only club in which a crucial scene is set near the end: the Chelsea Arts Club. It was founded in an area of London that attracted studio artists, who figured they needed a social venue. It continues to this day, and the only way to visit is if a member invites you. The history and rules of the club can be found at its website, which explains on its homepage:

Established in 1890, the Club has occupied the same house in Old Church Street since 1902. As well as painters, sculptors, designers, photographers and architects the Club numbers film makers, poets, writers, dancers, actors and musicians amongst its Members.

The Club’s parties are legendary.

Mobile phones are banned.

There is no dress code.

Here is the description in The Silkworm:

By the light of the old-fashioned streetlamp the cartoonish murals covering the front of the Chelsea Arts Club were strangely eerie. Circus freaks had been painted on the rainbow-stippled walls of a long low line of ordinarily white houses knocked into one: a four-legged blonde girl, an elephant eating its keeper, an etiolated contortionist in prison stripes whose head appeared to be disappearing up his own anus. The club stood in a leafy, sleepy and genteel street, quiet with the snow that had returned with a vengeance, falling fast and mounting over roofs and pavements. . . . All through Thursday the blizzard had grown thicker and now, viewed through a rippling lamplit curtain of ice flakes, the old club in its fresh pastel colors appeared strangely insubstantial, pasteboard scenery, a trompe l'œil marquee.

All of which got me curious: does this club really exist? (Obviously, yes.) And was the described mural a permanent feature? No, not exactly: apparently the mural is constantly redone. I found a nice sampling of some of them—beginning, though, with the club's unadorned self. (Except: what's with that brown door? See if you can spot it again, a little further down.)

Next time I'm in London, I will have to wander past!