GREAT HOMES

A MASTERFUL CARVER, HE DISCOVERS intricate figures and scenes from the past buried within solid blocks of wood. A magician with food and flowers, she transforms a dining table into a garden of wonders and then cooks an equally exquisite meal to serve on it. Together they invest the imprints of these talents, not to mention an abundance of elbow grease, upon an altogether extraordinary home.

Chantai and John B.Gunn Jr. come from separate worlds-she grew up in the French countryside, he’s a native Dallasite-but their mutual love of beautiful things and their desire to live without artifice unites them. Together they have instilled a warm and welcoming spirit into a once fairly average ’50s tract house in East Dallas’ Lakewood section. With theirstewardship, the home has taken a big leap from ranchburger to boeuf bourguignon-from genetically bland to richly flavored and irresistibly tempting.

Being modest, the Cunns speak somewhat reluctantly about their achievements at home. “It’s the way a house should look to me,” says Chantai. “We have accumulated a lot of neat objects that we value a great deal,” adds John.

Their friends, though, talk about the Gunns in much less timid terms. “We prize an invitation to dinner at John and Chantal’s home because, without being studied, they make it such an event,” says one friend. “They believe, in the French manner, that a meal is always an occasion to be savored-with food and wine, flowers and candlelight, and lots of good conversation. You sit at the table for three or four hours, and even then, you don’t want to leave.”

It’s no wonder, then, that the Gunns have given their dining area the place of honor. To do so, they simply switched room functions. The largest room in their home, formerly the living room, and the smaller one behind it, the dining room, reversed roles. Now the dining room contains enough space to accommodate seated dinner parties for as many as 10 people, while the living room serves as a more intimate spot where guests gather at the beginning or end of an evening.

The Gunns rag-painted both rooms in complementary shades of taupe and furnished them with some of their favorite things-namely, Chantal’s collection of French antiques and accessories and John’s Italian old masters paintings dating from the 16th through 18th centuries. Although the two had assembled their respective collections before they met in 1980, the various possessions seem meant for one another. “We hand-picked these things separately, hut for both of us, they represent various important times in our lives,” John says in explaining similarities between the two collections.

Even with those various treasures in place, the dining room still seemed to lack a finishing touch. So the Gunns, never reluctant to embark on a new artistic adventure, enlisted an artist friend’s help for a trompe l’oeil painting of the dining room. The space creates the illusion of a room in a baroque Italian villa with cracked stucco, beveled ceiling beams, and vines climbing the four corners. It’s an unabashedly romantic setting enhanced by personal touches including Chantal’s collection of antique French faience (porcelains) and her always inventive floral designs.

The remainder of the home-kitchen, den, bedrooms, baths, and a garage converted into Chantais floral studio- spreads over 2,300 square feet. At every turn, evidence of Chantal’s creative, hands-on remodeling pops into view, whether it’s the kitchen paneling that she pickled, or the bedroom walls that she painted and lined with fabric, or the garden that she planted and tends. “I never thought much about doing something,” Chantai says with typical self-effacement. “Instead I just did it. That’s the way I was brought up in France-if you couldn’t afford to buy something, you just did it yourself.”

That spirit of invention and self-reliance has guided both Chantai and John not only through their private lives, but through their professional lives as well. Once alead-ing member of Dallas’ banking community, John took the plunge into artistic self-employment in 1984, when he began using his wood-carving skills to assist importers of European furniture in restoration efforts. Then the two of them opened the Chantai Gunn antiques store in North Dallas in 1989. The store didn’t succeed, but it enabled customers to appreciate Chantais dramatic flair for floral design; she began her own freelance career and now decorates not only dining tables but rooms and entire houses for weddings, holidays, and other occasions.

With all those artistic talents overflowing from both husband and wife, perhaps the making of a happily beguiling home ranked as a foregone conclusion for the Gunns. But the Gunns would never admit to something that boastful. Chantai only says, “When people say to me, ’We love being here,’ then I’m very glad, because we do, too.”