Murray & Co and its Sunday auction: the famous ‘hammer’ of Madras nears the century mark

An auction under way at Murray & Co.

Any popular music consumer who scours the decades for earworms would be familiar with the phrase “Hammer time”, sung elegantly by M.C. Hammer in his “U Can’t Touch This”. In Madras and now Chennai, a different form of ‘Hammer time’ has been playing out since February 10, 1927 when Murray & Co saw the light, having been founded by brothers A. Vedantam and S. Rajam. In the 99 years plus a few months of its existence, the auction house has not given that hammer a break except for a couple of times due to inescapable situations. What does the continuity mean to those at the helm of Murray & Co? 

Hemant Srivatsa, partner, Murray & Co., responds: “We are very proud of it. We have conducted Sunday auctions almost without fail since our inception. There were a few weeks during our relocation when we had to pause, and of course, the pandemic was the longest period we could not hold auctions. Other than that, we have kept the tradition going.”

The team at Murray & Co.