Gintautas Vezys Bookplate Collection, approximately 1958-approximately 2006

Gift of Bridget and Vaiva Vezys, 2008.

The Gintautas Vezys Bookplate Collection is open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 1 box at a time (Priority III).

The Gintautas Vezys Bookplate Collection is the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Gintautas Vezys Bookplate Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Adrian Alexander, 2011.

This inventory was created with the generous support of the Council on Library and Information Services, which is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Gintautas Vezys as born in 1926 in Kaunas, Lithuania. In 1944 his family was forced to move to Germany where they lived in several refugee camps until 1949 when the family moved to Chicago. In 1965 he became president of AM&M Publications, a non-profit publisher that provided a voice to Lithuanian authors outside the censorship of the USSR. Under his leadership, 88 books were published over the next four decades. In 1969, Vezys visited Lithuania and met several artists that inspired his life-long interest in bookplates as an art form.

Collection of over 4,700 bookplates, primarily by Lithuanian artists. The collection includes artists from other primarily European countries including the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, the United States, and Switzerland. Japan, Kazakhstan, and Brazil are also represented. The work of Vincas Kisarauskis, Vytautas O. Virkau, Henrietta Vepstas, Kazys Rimtas Taraibilda, Domicele Tarabildiene, and Antanas Kmieliauskis are especially well represented. Media include letterpress, etching, engraving, and woodcut.

In addition to bookplates, the collection includes exhibitions catalogs, posters, documentation, and ephemera from bookplate exhibitions, including those that contained material from the Vezys collection. Exhibits in the Chicago area are well represented. Other ephemera in the collection include articles and clippings related to bookplates and ex libris organizations as well as correspondence and greeting cards.

Papers are organized in the following series:

Series 1: Lithuanian artists, 1958-2003 Boxes 1-11 Series 2: Non-Lithuanian artists, 1980-2005 Boxes 11-15 Series 3: Exhibits, 1973-2006 Boxes 16-17 Series 4: Ephemera, 1968-2000 Boxes 17-18 Series 5: Greeting Cards, 1968-2005 Boxes 19-21

• Names
  • Kisarauskis, Vincas
  • Kmieliauskis, Antanas
  • Tarabilda, Kazys Rimtas
  • Tarabildiene, Domicele, 1912-
  • Vepstas, Henrietta
  • Vezys, Gintautas, 1926-2006
  • Virkau, Vytautas O., 1930-
• Subject
  • Art in bookplates
  • Bookplate designers
  • Bookplates -- Competitions
  • Bookplates -- Exhibitions
  • Bookplates, Lithuanian
  • Chicago
  • Ephemera
  • Erotic bookplates
  • Fantasy in bookplates
  • Literary bookplates
  • Nude in bookplates
  • Printing History and Book Arts
  • Scenic bookplates
  • Typographical bookplates
  • Women in bookplates
• Geographic Coverage
  • Illinois -- Chicago
  • Lithuania