Muslin, a soft, smooth fabric, isn't usually associated with the winding mechanism of a watch, but it will be a piece of muslin that will soon link one of the most famous planes every built with the revival of British watchmaking: the Wright brothers meet Bremont. Photo: Bremont

MUSLIN, A SOFT, smooth fabric, isn't usually associated with the winding mechanism of a watch. But it will be a piece of muslin, 111 years old, that will soon link one of the most famous planes ever built with the revival of British watchmaking.

On Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Orville and Wilbur Wright realized humankind's ancient dream when their engine-powered flying machine broke free of gravity and completed four short flights. The brothers, who owned a bicycle factory in Dayton, Ohio, had wanted a light aircraft, so they designed the wings of their flying machine with ribs and spars in thin slats of wood with a skin of muslin, which kept the weight to about 341 kilograms with the pilot.

The Wright Flyer in 1903 Wright State University/Planepix

Lightness wasn't the only reason for the muslin. The brothers had discovered, before anyone else, how wings moved during flight.

During flight wings roll from side to side, making smooth flying impossible. The best way to reduce roll, the Wrights concluded, was to fabricate flexible wings capable of changing angles and shaped like the wings of a bird—a phenomenon they called "wing warping." Muslin had the strength and suppleness to maintain the integrity of the wings while also achieving optimum wing warping.

What happened to the muslin from that first aircraft? Amanda Wright Lane, the brothers' great, great niece, tells the story: "At Kitty Hawk, after those flights, Uncle Orv and Uncle Wil paused for a while to think about what they had done and a gust of wind came along and flipped the Flyer. It tumbled like tumbleweed and was smashed to bits. They picked up all the bits and brought them home to Dayton. They packed all of it up in a crate and put it into their shed, and started planning their next flying machine."

The muslin stayed in the crate through Wilbur's death in 1912, the devastating Dayton flood of 1913 and Orville's 1914 move to a massive new house, Hawthorn Hill in Oakwood, Ohio. In 1925, Orville Wright agreed to display the now rebuilt 1903 Flyer in the London Science Museum. He reswathed the wings in new muslin; the original material stayed in the crate. The Flyer returned to the U.S.—and was finally displayed in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.—in 1948, the year Orville Wright died. A company bought Hawthorn Hill for offices and the muslin remained in the possession of the Wright family.

Wilbur, left, and Orville Wright Dayton History

"In the early '90s, we were building towards the centenary of the 1903 flight," says Ms. Wright Lane. "So my father, Wilkinson Wright, started the Wright Family Foundation to raise money for grants to people who were writing a book or planning an event that would honor the Wright brothers.

"My father knew Uncle Orv and had been the family spokesperson for decades. He had been ill with cancer for two years. For those two years I sat with him and my brother, Stephen, sat with him and we tried to learn all the things he knew about his great uncles."

The story now shifts to London, where two other brothers obsessed with flight were establishing a company. The siblings were British pilots Giles and Nick English. It was 2002 and the company was Bremont.

"From the beginning, Giles and I have asked ourselves what would be the holy grail of aviation watches?" says Nick English. "The answer has always been a watch with something in it from the Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer. But we thought that's an impossible dream because the plane is in the Smithsonian."

The Bremont Wright Flyer, launched July 2014 Jason Alden for The Wall Street Journal

In 2012, the brothers mentioned their quixotic quest to a photographer friend, who said he might know someone who knows someone in the Wright family. Without much hope of success, they asked the friend to pursue his contact. Six months later, the excited photographer phoned. "We thought he was joking," recalls Mr. English. "Then we ended up discussing with Amanda the possibility of getting some of the muslin. We couldn't believe it."

Negotiations started in the middle of 2012, and a year and a half down the line, Bremont acquired 90 square centimeters of the original muslin. The undisclosed sum paid to the Wright Family Foundation will be used to help to restore Hawthorn Hill, which it acquired in 2006.

Mr. English picked up the precious cargo in the U.S., placed it in a folder and zipped it into his jacket for the flight back to the U.K. "I often leave things on planes," he says. "I kept touching my pocket during the flight to make sure the folder was still there."

The Bremont Wright Flyer, launched in July 2014 Jason Alden for The Wall Street Journal

Once the material was back in the U.K., the brothers set about designing a watch to incorporate the fabric. Their Wright Flyer has a round, 43 mm case (in rose gold, white gold or stainless steel) and an understated dial (white with the rose gold and white gold, or black with stainless steel) with Roman numerals. The hour and minute hands have elongated teardrop shaped tips and there is a circular seconds subdial at 9 o'clock. A discreet 1903 sits inside the seconds dial. A tiny snip of the muslin is secured between two pieces of glass and set into the tungsten rotor of the watch's automatic winding device, easily visible through the back of the case. The brothers calculate they have enough muslin for 450 watches. Stainless steel versions will cost about £19,000, while gold versions will go for about £30,000.

Since setting up Bremont, the English brothers have built their watches in Switzerland. That changes with the Wright Flyer. Production of many of the watch's components will happen in a new factory being constructed near the company's Henley-on-Thames headquarters. The Wright Flyer will boast the first mass-produced mechanical watch movement manufactured in the U.K. for more than 50 years—a fact subtly alluded to by the word London on the dial.

Amanda Wright Lane thinks her great, great uncles would appreciate the Wright Flyer. "The brothers were fascinated by anything that had moving parts."