This Stephen Hawking-inspired watch includes fragments of his desk

The Bremont Hawking limited edition collection, made by the British watchmaker Bremont, has a special treat for fans of the work of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Monochrome Watches reports. The watches, shown below, include little pieces of a drawer from the desk Hawking wrote some of his work at. The fragments are made to represent planets in a tiny cosmos on the rear of the limited edition timepieces. As you can imagine, these literal pieces of history don't come cheap.

Bremont's making three variants, all in limited numbers. The cheapest costs around $10,600, with the most expensive priced at over $25,000. "Only 388 stainless steel and black dial, 88 rose gold with black dial and 88 white gold and blue dial pieces will be made; the numbers referencing the year in which Hawking's Brief History of Time was published, 1988," the company explains.

According to the British edition of GQ, the Hawking family gave the Bremont brothers their blessing for the project, and a portion of the sales will go to the Hawking foundation which "supports cosmological research and people with motor neurone disease, the debilitating condition Hawking lived with for almost his entire adult life."

A timeless beauty — Don't let the price tag scare you away, though, by Bremont's standard this collection is affordable. Its Ronnie Woods collection made in partnership with The Rolling Stones guitarist starts at $50,000. The Hawking-inspired watch is a beautiful reminder of the physicist's tireless work on black holes, physics, gravity, and how his work fundamentally changed our understanding of space and time. The pieces of wood in the watch come from Hawking's desk that he inherited from his grandmother, which she, in turn, received as a retirement gift.

Hawking's son, Tim Hawking, has praised the work gone into creating this edition. "My father’s work was primarily theoretical," he says. "Nevertheless, he was a person who placed great value on precision craftsmanship and the interplay of design and technology. This antique desk was a most treasured possession, representing both his grandmother’s pioneering commitment to education, and a portal back to happy childhood memories."

Bremont has a long history of inserting physical fragments of historical relevance into its timepieces. You'd think the novelty would have worn off by now, but its Hawking collection is the most inspired — and inspirational — yet. We do have to admire the Bremont team's powers of persuasion, too. How they convince people to part with such valuable — literally, and sentimentally — heirlooms is anyone's guess.