What we're talking about here as "relief" maps are not just lakes, mountains, hills, river valleys, etc. But, we should also consider John Sherman's crews' efforts to make Braille maps of the UW campus where the 3Dness of the maps was formed by making pasta shapes glued on metallic sheets which had holes poked in them. The metallic sheets were placed on top of a space from which the air above the metallic sheets could be later evacuated through the holes in the metallic sheets as the plastic sheet was melted.  Next, a plastic sheet was laid on the top of the metallic sheets and a heating unit was placed above plastic sheet.  When everything was in place, the heating unit was turned on and the plastic sheet gradually melted and took on the shapes of the pasta and the Braille letters, voila, a Braille map of one section of the campus.  I think they ultimately had about 9 or 12 sections (about 10 or 12 inches on a side so each section was square) by the time they finished.