To promote appreciation of ancient Chinese art and philately, Taiwan Post is issuing a set of ten stamps (each with a denomination of NT$5.00) based on the Sung Dynasty painting "Eighteen Scholars of the T’ang" by the Emperor Hui-tsung, which is in the National Palace Museum collection. The full painting will be printed in a se-tenant block of ten stamps in two rows of five. The ten stamps are not uniform in size. Instead there are four different sizes, enabling the se-tenant block to be broken up into compositionally coherent individual stamps. The Sung Dynasty Emperor Hui-tsung (1082-1135) was a very gifted calligrapher and painter and was especially good at landscape, flower-and-bird, and figure paintings. Refined and elegant, his style of calligraphy is called "slender gold script" and is characterized by thin yet powerful brush strokes. "Eighteen Scholars of the T’ang" depicts a boisterous and joyous party of the era’s literati, with scholars touring the garden, writing poetry, playing music, drinking and feasting. They sip tea, drink wine and eat delicacies in a garden where a creek meanders amid scattered rocks, flowers, pine trees and bamboo. Servants prepare tea and wine by a square table. The table has stretchers between the legs and is decorated with aprons and spandrels. A tea set is placed on the table. Beside the table is a bamboo tea basket with a tea tray on top. A simple wooden-framed two-panel screen sits atop spandrels and shoe feet. The upper part is mullioned and the lower part paneled. The scholars sat around a very large waisted table with recessed legs, a style popular during the T’ang and Five Dynasties. This is the best of several versions of this painting.