Although Noguchi visited Italy many times in the 1950s, he first worked there in 1962 as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, where he made bronze casts of balsa wood and clay sculptures. On the advice of sculptor Henry Moore he visited the Henraux quarries near Pietrasanta, where Noguchi established a summer residence and studio. In Pietrasanta, and later in Querceta, Noguchi carved marble using both hand and power tools. In one group of sculptures Noguchi assembled bands of colored marble, using a post-tension system in which elements are threaded along a steel rod that is tightened at the ends to hold the parts together. It also was in Italy in 1966 that Noguchi first made sculptures in which large parts of the stone were left unworked, as they had come from the quarry, prefiguring the rough granite and basalt sculptures that he would carve in Japan during his last two decades.