Special 53 A City of Cathay - A Famous Handscroll Painting in the Palace Museum- Stamps (1968) (D053)

Stamp SN : D053
Stamp Name : Special 53 A City of Cathay - A Famous Handscroll Painting in the Palace Museum- Stamps (1968)
Stamp Cat Standard : Special Stamps
Stamp Cat : Calligraphy & Paintings,Navigation,Bridges
Issue date : 1968-06-18
Dimension of stamps(mm.) : S53.1-53.5 51×33
Printer : Printing Bureau of the Ministry of Finance, Japan
Sheet composition : S53.1-53.5 5×10
Process : Photogravure
Paper : Photogravure stamp paper
Perforation : 12 1/2
Photographer : Liu Pao-chin

Continuing the issue of the collection of the Palace Museum, another set of stamps with 〝A City of Cathay-A Famous Handscroll Painting〞as the design was issued. Composition of the stamp set is unusual. Five 1.00 stamps were printed in a strip showing the last eleven feet of the handscroll. Two other stamps with the higher values of 5.00 and 8.00 in a larger format show two other beautiful sections of the scroll. The original copy of this handscroll was painted by Chang Tse-tuan of the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1126 A.D.) based on the actual social life of the city of Kaifeng, the capital of that dynasty. The picture includes more than 4,000 human figures of every profession and attire, animals, birds, trees, flowers, vessels, boats, buildings, stores, houses of entertainment, streets, lanes, bridges, city walls, city gates and many other things. The copy introduced by this set of stamps was painted in the Ching dynasty in 1736 by the joint efforts of five court painters-Chen Mei, Sun Hu, Chin Kun, Tai Hung and Cheng Chih-tao.