More so than any other consumer product, watches are intertwined with history. Whether it?s your grandfather?s Elgin pocket watch or Paul Newman?s Rolex Daytona that recently broke the record for most expensive wristwatch ever sold, it?s these relationships between time and personality that allow watches to retain a sort of indefinable sense of humanity on the wrist. Some brands embrace this ideological stance and put a focus on bridging the gap between historical perception and modern tastes, while others take the watch as an archival item onto itself and build it out with historically significant objects of the past. Is this taking it too far" Does adding a piece of the Titanic onto a watch provoke a moral quandary or make it more valuable" What about adding human blood onto a watch?s dial" What?s the limit to these ?special-edition? timepieces" That?s up to you. Here are nine remarkable examples of mechanical watches utilizing upcycled materials.

Bremont is a modern British brand founded by a pair of brothers that have been flying for a whole lot longer than they?ve been making watches. Because of this, they?ve always applied a distinct aviation aesthetic to their timepieces. Released in 2014, the Bremont Wright Flyer is the ideal application of this historic appeal. The Wright Flyer takes a small piece of muslin fabric from the original 1903 airplane built by the Wright Brothers and applies it to the watch?s rotor. The muslin fabric is then ...