Offered in Design on 11 December at Christie’s in New York His travels took him beyond just Japan and the US — to Cambodia and Indonesia, the Middle East and Mexico (where he survived the wrath of Rivera); to Italy (where he acquainted himself with marble), Beijing (where he studied ink-wash painting under Qi Baishi) and Paris, where in 1927 he apprenticed for several months under the Modernist sculptor Brancusi.