The Provenance of a B W van Dyk Chair

This is the story of Burger Wynand van Dyk, the carpenter of Barry Street in Robertson, the Western Cape of South Africa. His craft reflects a legacy stretching back more than two centuries to the earliest days of European settlement at the Cape of Good Hope. He was the great-great-great-great-grandson of Joost Pietersz van Dyk (1666–1718).

The familiar stamp of BW van Dyk on one of his stinkwood chairs

Joost Pietersz van Dyk and his brother Burgert Pietersz van Dyk (1665-1720) left their home in Izenberg, Netherlands, to serve the Dutch East India Company at the distant Cape of Good Hope in 1686. Joost and his brother Burgert, sailed aboard the Huis te Zilverstein¹, trading the familiar landscapes of Europe for the rugged, unfamiliar coasts beneath Table Mountain. Together they would lay the foundations of a family whose name and its trades, would persist for centuries. Though both arrived as soldiers, the harsh realities and opportunities of the Cape soon drew them into civilian life.

222: Record of Joost Pieterzs in the Crew Listing for Ship 'Huis te Zilwerstein', in 1686

The brothers Joost and Burgert van Dyk arrived at a Cape Colony still raw and precarious, bound by the discipline of the VOC yet granted the freedom to carve out a life on foreign soil. Joost would marry and settle as a free burgher, while Burgert, though often recorded as a woodcutter, left behind an estate inventory filled with carpenter’s tools², revealing a skill that would echo down the centuries. Their children and grandchildren and their descendants in turn, inherited both the family names and the practical knowledge of woodworking, establishing a tradition in which trade and lineage were inseparable.

223: Record of Burgert Pieterzs in the Crew Listing for Ship 'Huis te Zilwerstein', in 1686

Over the generations, the van Dyks spread inland, moving from the timber and tools of Cape Town into farms around Robertson, Caledon, and beyond. Names repeated across decades, Joost, Burgert, Wessel, Burger Wynand, each carrying the weight of heritage, each learning, teaching, and adapting the skills of their forebears. By the time Burger Wynand van Dyk (1867–1938) took up the carpenter’s tools in Barry Street, the rhythm of wood and handwork was not merely a trade, but a living testament to a family story begun 250 years earlier, linking soldiers, settlers, and craftsmen across the generations. His work, careful, deliberate, and rooted in tradition, reminded all who saw it, that family craft is more than skill. It is memory, identity, and legacy both in wood and hand.

A drawing of a BW van Dyk stinkwood carver chair

By 1690, after completing his military service, Joost chose to remain as a free burgher, marrying Helena Siebers and beginning a family that would carry the van Dyk name forward. That same spirit of independence and resourcefulness extended to Burgert, who, while often recorded as a woodcutter, clearly possessed the skills of a carpenter. A fact underscored by the list of carpenter's tools in the inventory of his estate in 1721, as referenced above. In 1691, the VOC officially permitted the brothers to cut timber for the purposes of re-sale, a rare opportunity that allowed them to build not only livelihoods but a lasting presence in the Cape Colony³. For a time, the two families lived together on property located in what is now St. George’s Street, Cape Town, expanding their holdings as their households grew.

A drawing of BW van Dyk dining chairs

From these humble beginnings, the van Dyk’s established a pattern that would echo for generations. Names and skills passed from father to son, uncle to nephew, each learning the trades of their forebears. Carpentry, woodworking, and later farming became part of the family’s identity, handed down alongside family names like Joost, Burgert, and Wessel. This continuity of skill and tradition would eventually be inherited by Burger Wynand van Dyk, the carpenter of Barry Street. Whose work not only reflected inherited craftsmanship but preserved a living connection to the ingenuity and resilience of the men who first arrived at the Cape over 250 years earlier.

Front and side view of a BW van Dyk carver, and dining chair

Joost Pietersz van Dyk and Helena Siebers raised several children, embedding the family in the growing settlement at the Cape. Among them was Andries van Dyk (1714–1782), who married Elisabeth Radÿn, and continued the family’s tradition of resilience and enterprise. Their children bore the familiar names of the family, Joost, Burgert, and Andries, many facing the harsh realities of colonial life, disease and hardship claiming several in infancy. Yet the surviving children, including Burgert van Dyk (1756–1842) and Petrus Johannes van Dyk (1758–1835), carried forward both the family name and practical skills, cementing the van Dyk’s as part of the fabric of the Cape’s settler society.

Traditional carpentry tools, Drostdy museum, Swellendam

Burgert van Dyk married Maria Margaretha Wessels, and their children, Wessel Jurie (1790–1832) and others, expanded the family further into the interior, farming in districts like Caledon and Robertson. The pattern of repeating names and trades continued. Sons learned the work of their fathers, whether farming or woodworking, and the skills of early settlers adapted to new landscapes. Wessel Jurie’s son, Burgert Wynand van Dyk (1822–1892), would farm at Klaasvoogdsrivier near Robertson and later at Kloppersbosch near Nuy, bridging the rural and artisanal traditions of the family. His marriage to Anna Catharina Johanna van Graan, produced children who grew up immersed in both the land and the legacy of craftsmanship.

A carpenter's tools and toolbox, Drostdy museum, Swellendam

Among these children was Wessel Jurie van Dyk (1843–1890), who maintained the family’s connection to woodworking while managing farms near Robertson. He married Elsje Catharina Petronella Fouché, linking two established settler families, and their children included Burger Wynand van Dyk (1867–1938), the carpenter of Barry Street. It was Burger Wynand who most fully embodied the enduring craft of the van Dyks. Though by his time the family had spread across the Western Cape, and many had turned to farming or other trades, Burger Wynand preserved the hands-on skill that had begun with Burgert Pietersz van Dyk centuries earlier.

A collection of saws, Drostdy museum, Swellendam 

Burger Wynand’s life was defined by his workbench, planes, and chisels, tools that represented not only his livelihood but a connection to his forebears, Joost and Burgert, soldiers turned settlers, who first brought timber and skill to the Cape. In 1934, he made a careful will to ensure that his carpenter’s tools would pass to his son and grandson, specifying that they could not be sold and would remain in the family. In doing so, he safeguarded a tangible piece of heritage, echoing the generations of van Dyks who had learned, adapted, and passed down both names and skills.

Excerpt from the will of Burger Wynand van Dyk, 8 September 1934

Though Burger Wynand’s son, Burger Wynand van Dyk (1908–1966), chose the trade of butchery, the story of the van Dyks’ craft lives on in the chairs he made and, in the tools, quietly awaiting a future generation. From soldiers of the VOC to free burghers, farmers, and carpenters, the van Dyk family exemplifies the enduring power of familial skill, memory, and legacy, each generation shaping the land and the craft of their ancestors into a living history.

Traditional glues, stains, and carpenter's tools, Drostdy museum, Swellendam 

Today, in the rooms of Towerwater, a collection of eight BW van Dyk chairs, two carvers and six dining chairs, stand not merely as furnishings, but as quiet custodians of this long and unbroken lineage. Their worn arms and steady frames carry the imprint of Burger Wynand’s hand, itself guided by generations before him, from the timber yards of early Cape Town to the farms and workshops of Robertson. 

Set of the eight BW van Dyk chairs in the Towerwater collection

In their presence, the past is neither distant nor abstract, but intimately felt, a continuity of craft, of family, and of place. These chairs gather more than people around a table, they gather stories, binding the present to a heritage shaped in wood, patience, and memory, echoing the enduring traditions that define both the van Dyk name and the spirit of Towerwater itself.

Reference:

¹ Crew Listing for Ship 'Huis te Zilwerstein,
   https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/1.04.02/invnr/5342
² MOOC8/4.59, Inventaris der goederen van Burgert Pietersz: van Dijk, 17 Januarij 1721
³ Resolutions of the Council of Policy of the Cape of Good Hope between 1651 and 1795,
  C. 21, pp. 17-23. 3 April 1691

Sources:

Crew Listing for Ship 'Huis te Zilwerstein - National Archives Netherlands
Information regarding the ship 'Huis te Silwerstein' - The VOCsite
VOC Employment Record - National Archives Netherlands
Van Dyk genealogy - Familysearch.org
VOC Resolutions of the Council of Policy of the Cape of Good Hope between 1651 and 1795
VOC Master of the Orphan Chamber (MOOC) Inventories
First Fifty Years - a project collating Cape of Good Hope records

Click on the link to read the related posts:

BW van Dyk - 19th Century furniture maker, Robertson

The anatomy of a BW van Dyk dining chair

The anatomy of a BW van Dyk dining carver

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The BW van Dyk chairs that found us