Although details can often be omitted, the representation of the relief on a wall map is not easier to depict than that on a handheld map. The fact that a wall map is to be used at a distance necessitates a vivid representation of the relief. The American cartographer Raisz noted with regard to wall maps: “Mountains shown in plastic shading with deep shadows are particularly effective.” [4] Before 1950 school wall maps were usually drawn by primary and secondary school teachers with much dedication but without any cartographic training. Not surprisingly, the relief representation on these maps is therefore often simple and not realistic. An example is given in Figure 4a (‘hairy caterpillars’). There are, however, exceptions to this rule. While topographic maps were obviously its main product, the ‘Topografische Inrichting’ also issued a small number of maps for use in schools. In 1923 its counterpart in Batavia (Djakarta) published the school wall map ‘Java en Madoera’ (see map extract in Figure 4b). It is clear that the relief representation on this map was created by professionals.
 



Every now and then nonprofessionals also produced relief representations that were of surprisingly high quality. Schoolmaster R. Noordhoff (not to be confused with one of the leading publishers of school wall maps P. Noordhoff) emphasized in his writings [5] the importance of the physical character of the landscape, and examined several techniques of relief representation. In 1902 he was strongly against hypsometric layers (“de schaduwzijde der Höhenschichten, made in Germany” according to the multilingual Noordhoff). However, he was an advocate of oblique hill shading, and on his school wall maps he put his opinions into practice (see map extract in Figure 4c). The fact that this schoolmaster’s representation of the volcanos of Java can compete with that of the ‘Topografische Inrichting’ (Figure 4b) is quite amazing.