A KALEIDOSCOPIC TALENT

An appreciation of artist Kinuko Craft, whose ingenuity graced PLAYBOY’s pages across five decades

-  CAT AUER

One day in 1974, Kinuko Yamabe Craft handdelivered to Playboy’s Chicago office a set of paintings she’d been commissioned to create for the magazine. Designed to accompany a “ribald classic,” Craft’s elaborate woodpanel triptych (right) and two additional works were so skillfully done, from the intricate medieval Russian iconography to the faux-distressed gold-leaf frames, that they looked as if they’d been lifted from the walls of a museum.

Stunned, associate art director Kerig Pope dropped to his knees and kissed her feet.

“I was astounded by how well she did it,” says Pope. “It had a very authentic look, and I was terribly impressed. It’s kind of embarrassing for me; she probably thought, What kind of weirdo is this?”

Craft was unfazed by Pope’s enthusiasm. Still a working artist today at the age of 79, she says that her many PLAYBOY projects gave her the opportunity to learn about other artists and their techniques. “worked like a school for me,” she says. “It was the most effective training I ever got.”

Having begun in 1967 with an assignment from founding art director Arthur Paul, Craft continued to work for PLAYBOY through 2000. Across those five decades, her phenomenal gift for working in whatever medium and style the task at hand required — including art deco, biblical, trompe l’oeil, even nursery-rhyme illustration — is on display in more than 100 magazine pieces.

From the moment she picked up her big sister’s crayons and drew a mountain landscape on a sliding screen in her family home in Kanazawa, Japan at the age of two, Craft knew she was an artist. “That was the first huge painting I did,” she says. “Nobody scolded me — I’m so grateful!”