She’s Offering a Piece of Her Life--80,000 Pieces, Actually

Margaret Lehman has a most uncommon problem. It seems that her late, beloved husband, Donald, a Renaissance man of letters and art, left her with his most prodigious achievement: a 10-foot-high, 16-foot-long, intricately crafted Italian glass-and-tile mosaic.

But that doesn’t begin to describe it. Sure it’s huge. And heavy. It weighs between 750 and 1,500 pounds, although no one has lifted it, so that’s just a guess. It consists of about 80,000 pieces of glass, each less than an inch square and painstakingly glued together over the course of two years. It has been valued at $50,000 to $70,000.

What does it show? Well, to best answer that you have to know a little bit about Donald Lehman, a lawyer who left law and his home in Portland, Ore., when stricken with a bad heart. To help him during his recovery in the 1950s, a friend gave him a mosaic-by-numbers kit. It struck a chord within him.

For the next 25 years, Lehman practiced and honed his craft. He bought only the best Venetian tile, eventually owning an inventory of several tons. Even though he wasn’t in it for the money, he had little trouble selling his artwork.

In many ways, however, the art was simply a vehicle that allowed Lehman to indulge his other abiding interest: Egyptology, the study of ancient Egyptian architecture, customs and language.

A keen student, Lehman immersed himself in Egyptian history. He read about it. He talked about it. He visited Cairo and the magnificent exhibits of the King Tutankhamen collection. And, through his mosaics, he re-created their past.

Which leads back to the Lehmans’ garage in Rancho Bernardo, a tidy, staid and serene community known more for its legions of golf-club-toting citizens than any connection to King Tut.

Enticed by a scene depicted on a linen chest in the king’s tomb, Lehman went about the task of replicating it, albeit in grand proportion. Finished 10 years ago, the mosaic is of the boy king in battle, riding a chariot, running down his enemies and slaughtering them with arrows and spears. There are a scarab, a large black bird, hieroglyphics and fierce, rampaging dogs. The colors are resplendent--turquoise, black, green, red, yellow and gold.

Lehman originally created the work believing it would be sold in San Francisco. But Margaret Lehman said that deal fell through. In 1981, Lehman died.

“He was the kind of man that, whatever he did, he did it with his whole being,” his widow said recently. “That’s one of the reasons he had his first heart attack when he was 42.”

So the mosaic stands in her garage. And that’s her problem. She wants to give it away, but the piece is so massive she has had trouble finding anyone to take it.

She thought she had an arrangement with Scripps Clinic to put it in its unit for people with diabetes--from which her husband also suffered--but that went awry when officials told her the scene of King Tut killing his enemies would be too stressful on the patients.

Then it looked like the mosaic would find a home at the new senior-citizens center in Rancho Bernardo Park, but, upon closer examination, it was discovered that the mosaic was too big for any of the center’s walls.

Most recently, Lehman read a newspaper article about the massive new convention center under construction in downtown San Diego. Just the place for the mosaic, she thought. But convention center officials disappointed her again. No thank you, they told her, the convention center wasn’t interested.

A small college in the Midwest has expressed interest, but Lehman is lukewarm about the prospect of sending the piece that far away.

“I’m concerned about shipping it so far. . . . And he was so happy in San Diego County, I would like to keep it here if I can,” she said.

In the meantime, Lehman will continue to wait.

“I’ve sold almost all of them,” she said of her husband’s mosaics.

For this last massive piece, though, she isn’t interested in selling; she wants to give it away.

“It’s FOB (free on board) in my garage,” she said.