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Woodbury, Connecticut’s antiques capital, boasts more high-quality dealers per square mile than any other town in the state. American, Asian and European treasures fill colonial homes, gracious mansions and converted barns (plus a grist mill and forge) along Route 6 (aka Main Street). Serious collectors of 18th-century American furniture know that Woodbury has been a destination for museum-quality furnishings—including rare pieces crafted in New England—for about a half-century. Even established businesses relocate here because the critical mass of quality dealers lures buyers seeking uncommon furnishings, decorative accessories and art. The community is also an excellent resource for custom-made reproductions, designers, craftspeople and restoration experts.

Typical of the lovely Litchfield Hills region, Woodbury is awash in green, rolling hills and curving streams. Its centerpiece is The Glebe House—a superbly preserved gambrel-roofed colonial home where the first bishop of the American Episcopal Church was consecrated—and the location of the only existing garden designed by famed British garden designer Gertrude Jeykll.

Start your antiquing just across the Woodbury town line on Route 6 at Monique Shay Antiques & Design, 920 Main Street South. Her red barn contains Canadian country specialties, such as armoires, pine refectory tables and ladder-back chairs with typically Canadian woven-rawhide seats. One painted kitchen cupboard dates from the 19th century, another has a glass front and a corner shelf unit is colored “Canadian” green. Appealing accessories include 19th-century French pottery from Normandy. Prices here range from $7,000 to $18,000 for cupboards and $65 to $625 for the pottery.

Eleish van Breems Antiques, 487 Main Street South, shows handsomely inside a 1760 colonial home. The firm’s specialty is high-country Gustavian pieces crafted by 18th- and 19th-century Scandinavian cabinetmakers influenced by the courts of Europe. An example is a pine corner cupboard with neoclassical carvings from 1790 ($21,000). Owners Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems also feature folk furniture from the same period; it’s a collection of warm, rustic painted pieces called “Allmoge.”

Paul and Barbara Winsor, owners of Winsor Antiques at No. 289, pride themselves on offering “unusual pieces in good, original condition.” A part of Woodbury’s antiques scene for five years, Winsor has been in business since 1983. The gallery’s focus is on important English and French country furniture from the late 17th to early 19th centuries, including English Windsor chairs and early English pottery. Here you can also find French provincial pieces, such as a 19th-century faux bois–decorated armoire with a long case clock ($9,500) and an ornate clock from Normandy, circa 1840 ($7,500).