A simple cottage undergoes a sophisticated transformation that respects its past but celebrates its quirky character.

Antiques dealer Angus Wilkie has owned this foursquare early-19th-century cottage on four acres for 18 years. The house is located 110 miles northeast of New York City, where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound.

Crisp, glossy white trim contrasts with glue-covered plaster walls. The mirror is German, and the chair is Biedermeier.

A collection of American tinsel paintings brightens the room. An English grain-painted chair, circa 1830, is covered in striped horsehair. The stool is also from the 19th century.

In the teak-paneled library, an English satinwood table with a leather top, circa 1825, is paired with a cherrywood Biedermeier chair. The engravings are from Goya's series "La Tauromachia" ("The Bullfight").

The kitchen, which has windows on four sides, is further enlivened with glossy red paint on the window frames, some of the cabinetry, and a staircase that leads to a guest bedroom. Black-and-white linoleum tiles pull together furnishings and fixtures from a range of eras, including bobbin-turned English Regency chairs with rush seats grouped around a 19th-century Continental trestle table.

The sink came with the house, and a cabinet holds a collection of Napoleon Ivy Wedgewood china, the pattern used by the French commander.

To give the staircase a clean, modern line, the banister was removed and storage cupboards and shelving were installed underneath it.

A pair of English Regency chairs sits beneath two early-19th-century depictions of Vesuvius erupting at night, part of a collection of about 20.

The covered terrace off the kitchen, a favorite spot for breakfast, is furnished with folding teak plantation chairs made in India around 1900 and a group of staghorn ferns; the tree stump was rolled home from the banks of the Connecticut River, where it was found.

The summerhouse, once an artist's studio, serves as a breezeway, with a Noguchi paper shade, a 19th-century painted-iron garden chair, and a bluestone floor edged with river rocks.

A potted calamondin-orange tree stands alongside boxwood squares outside the summerhouse. The bluestone walkway leading to the L-shaped barn is enclosed by dry-laid fieldstone walls edged with lavender.

A 19th-century Chinese export teak campaign chest in the master bedroom holds a 1951 iron sculpture of a rubber tree that was found at a Paris flea market and a 19th-century silver-mounted "coco de mer," a double coconut from Seychelles; the painting of Murray Bay, Quebec, is by Reeve Schley.

Crystal-and-wire sculptures by Bob Russell are displayed in a guest bath; the apothecary cabinet displays shells collected by Wilkie in the West Indies.

The Biedermeier room on the ground floor contains a bed, a collection of mirrors, and a side table in the distinctive mid-19th-century style.

The guest room above the kitchen is fitted out with an oak bed, a side table by Florence Knoll, and a 19th-century rosewood lamp.