I’ve been hesitant to write and post a review of these hog hair paint brushes. Before I begin my review, I want to quickly say that the stiffer hog bristle paint brushes in general are advantageous to certain types of paint and painting, such as impasto technique with thick bodied oil paint. I would not personally use ANY stiff hog haired brushes on more delicate techniques, details, or media. Moreover, I would consider the styles and types of painting that work well with such brushes to be largely the domain of intermediate to advanced painters, and not for beginners. These Meeden hog hair brushes strike me as being similar to the Miya brand of brushes that they sell to use with their jelly gouache sets. I’ve yet to hear or read a review written by an American that get along well with these type of brushes for things like gouache, btw.The Meeden hog haired brush set comes packaged in a nice sturdy box that advertise what’s inside as premium, washed, durable, hog bristle that will not lose hairs. Once I opened the box, I was hit with a powerful chemical odor, sort of like paint thinner or permanent magic marker. The brushes are long handled and attractive with a black and bronze motif. There aren’t any numbers on the brushes. However, there is information on the outside of the box that numbers the brushes and gives the type/ name and size of each ( please refer to included image). My experience in using these particular brushes was to use them to apply oil paint ONLY. I tried them out, and then exchanged them for different types ( non hog hair) of brushes pretty quickly, as it is not my intent at this time to paint with thick impasto applications. I think that these brushes might come in very handy for expressionist painters who paint with heavy bodied mediums in an abstract way, that rely heavily on indelible paint strokes and bold color. Or perhaps there is a cultural difference between my sensibilities and those of the manufacturers who makes brushes such as these for media such as gouache and acrylic. Regardless, I do think that there is something about the powerful smell of chemicals when the box is open, even after all this time and even though I’ve used and washed some of these brushes, that I personally find disturbing. For that reason, plus the difficulty in using these types of brushes for refined, delicate, detail type of work AND also because they are not individually numbered, makes me reluctant to recommend these brushes to beginners, at the very least.