Bremont’s New Watch Contains Bits of Stephen Hawking’s Desk
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The British company Bremont is noted for its unusual limited edition watches. Previous releases include the Codebreaker, a watch containing material from Bletchley Park; the HMS Victory, a watch containing oak and copper from Lord Nelson’s battleship and the Bremont Wright Flyer, a watch containing a piece of muslin from the wing of the Wright Brothers’ first aeroplane.
That’s setting the bar for future releases fairly high. But Bremont may have just trumped itself. Today it announces the Bremont Hawking Limited Edition, a watch produced in collaboration with the family of the late theoretical physicist. It contains four wooden disks inlaid into the back of the watch taken from the desk at which Professor Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time and contemplated the birth of the universe. The desk, says Bremont, was “one of his most treasured possessions”.
The classically styled watch, which features a retrograde seconds hand and a large date window, also contains meteorite (to symbolise the cosmos), is etched with the stars from the night sky in Oxford on 8 January 1942 (the date Hawking was born) while each serial number is printed on paper from the original copies of a 1979 research paper on the thermal properties of black hole. There are 388 of these watches produced in stainless steel with a black dial, 88 in rose gold with a black dial and 88 in white gold with a blue dial, the numbers referring to 1998, the year A Brief History of Time was published.
"The wood sample in the timepiece originates from an oak, William & Mary slope-front bureau desk drawer thought to date back to the early 18th century,” says Hawking’s son, Tim, who worked with Bremont on the project. “My father’s paternal grandmother received it as a gift upon her retirement as Headmistress from a school she had founded for girls in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire. It was given to my father in 1975 upon his return to the UK after his year’s visiting fellowship to Caltech, Pasadena, and would remain with him until his death in 2018.”
Bremont has forged an idiosyncratic path since being founded by brothers Nick and Giles English in Henley-on-Thames in 2002. Inspired by their father’s love of flying historical aircraft, and their own passion for mechanical gadgets and daring do, it has consistently punched above what might reasonably be expected of a British watch start-up going up against the Swiss mega-corporations.
Indeed, their Britishness has become their calling card – as the interest in HMS Victory and Bletchley Park attests. Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly another British icon, this time one of personal significance for Nick and Giles.
“Our father knew of Stephen Hawking having been to St Albans School together, a couple of years apart, and following the same path to Cambridge University,” Giles explains.
As with each of Bremont’s limited editions there is also a philanthropic dimension. Part of the proceeds from these watches will go to the Stephen Hawking Foundation, which facilitates cosmological research as well as support for those who live with Motor Neurone Disease.
A timepiece endorsed by the ultimate authority on time? If nothing else, it’s a conversation starter.
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