Generated from the same geometry the printer is handed — the plate seen from directly above. It cannot show the relief, which is the part you have to hold.
Europe
Forty-five countries at real elevation
Europe is the classic first political puzzle, and printing it in relief changes what it teaches. The Alps run across four pieces at once. Italy's Apennine spine and Norway's fjord coast are things you feel before you read them. And the flat middle — the North European Plain, where borders have moved most in the last three centuries — is visibly the part of the map with nothing in the way.
What a child works out
- Which borders follow mountains and rivers, and which do not.
- Country shapes are memorable when you have handled them.
- The flattest part of Europe is the part whose map has changed most.
The plate
- Pieces
- 45 pieces
- Plate
- 176 × 250 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 24.7 km
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 20.64
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 8 mm²
- Fit
- 0.35 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
B5 — the size of a school exercise book.
How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.
Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.
Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.
Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.
Every named piece
- Albania
- Andorra
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bornholm
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Corsica
- Crete
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Italy
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malta
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- Northern Ireland
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Sardinia
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
Zoom in, zoom out
A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.
Follow the borders — World to continent to country to canton to city district
More from Countries & States
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The United States
The lower forty-eight, and two pieces you would not expect
Fifty pieces. The straight western borders and the crooked eastern ones, over the ground that explains both.
- Pieces
- 50 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 20.1 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00
North America
Nineteen countries, Panama to the Arctic
The continent as countries — including the Caribbean islands that are usually too small to cut.
- Pieces
- 19 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 49.3 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00
Switzerland
Twenty-three cantons over the Alps
The cantons, printed at 1 mm to 1.5 km, with the Alps in white and every major lake in blue.
- Pieces
- 23 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 1.5 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00