It certainly looks like a relief to me.
There's two ways to make raised letters on something like that. One is to apply the letters as part of the forging process. This is cheap, and is usually only seen on mas produced items. It also looks like crap.
A relief means that the whole thing was smooth, and rather than carving out the letters, all the metal around the letters was carefully carved away. This is a very time consuming process, even on modern CnC machines, and is a real mark of quality.
Given that these were almost certainly made before CnC machines, this had to have been done either by hand, or on a very complex jig. Either way, it would have been a labor of love for the craftsman who produced these.