City Paper Best of Baltimore 2007
"...Home Anthology's 5,000 square feet of midcentury modern furniture, with its clean lines and suave attitude, evokes James Bond cool and makes us finally get what the big deal is with Charles Eames and Herman Miller."

City Paper's Annual Gift Guide
-City Paper, Baltimore, 2005

Best Mid-Century Modern Furniture -Baltimore Magazine, 2005

Best Eclectic Vintage Furniture -Baltimore Magazine, 2004

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Lucky Magazine
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The Baltimore Sun
Style Magazine, Baltimore
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Voted BEST Eclectic Vintage Furniture 2004

by Baltimore Magazine

Nostalgic for tulip tables, egg chairs, vinyl sofas, or a bar shaped like a Sunkist orange? Home Anthology is a haven for lovers of all things deco, retro, and mid-century modern. You never know what post-war treasures you’ll find in this spacious showroom, located in The Historic Oella Mill. Home Anthology is open only Friday through Sunday, because married owners Rob Degenhard and Nini Sarmiento spend the rest of their time logging miles on their Ford Club Wagon in the hunt for prototypical pieces of the past. 2005 Voted BEST Mid-Century Modern Furniture

by Baltimore Magazine

Mid-Century Modern Furniture Home Anthology, 91-95 Mellor Ave., Catonsville, 410-744-0042, is back in business! After a brief hiatus, owners Rob Degenhard and Nini Sarmiento have opened a vast new 5,000-square-foot space with an airy SoHo vibe. The showroom still offers the best mid-century modern pieces, like teak cube chairs covered in an orange Knoll-style fabric, signature Eames wire chairs with Eiffel tower bases, and Vladimir Kagan-style side tables. Our favorite additions are the Modular Arts wall installations, made from 32-inch square panels of sculptural gypsum.

Mod, Mod World

Saavy Shopper, Style Magazine

January/February 2004

Ellicott City has long been known for its antiques shops and stores selling "new country." So Savvy was thrilled to see Home Anthology's gorgeous space stocked with a divine selection of mid-century modern. Most of the upholstered pieces, sideboards, tables, lamps and buffets are Danish modern - with names like Eames, Paul Evans, Hans Wagner and Haywood Wakefield - but look for American reproduction numbers of the strongest design elements from the '20s to '60s as well. Don't Miss: Savvy spotted the most fabulous glass and chrome dining room table, complete with eight acrylic chairs with chrome legs, for a rock bottom price.

Much More Than a “Coffee” Table

By Christianna McCausland for Chesapeake Home

07/17/06

...Robert Degenhard, co-owner of the mid-century furniture store Home Anthology in Catonsville, Maryland, explains that glass and other translucent materials can help create the illusion of space because, visually, they don’t feel large. He points to a coffee table in the store from the 1970s that is composed of stacked Lucite boxes as a base and topped with glass. However, a piece like this is almost purely for looks.

“Initially, coffee tables were for when people received guests,” says Degenhard. “Now people use them for everything—to eat off when watching TV or to store things.” He explains that he and his wife use a chest as a coffee table, storing blankets and pillows in it for visiting guests. “We now have [in the store] two Danish tables made of teak with drawers that can slide out from either side,” he says. The tables also have shelves below to hold books or magazines...

University of Baltimore Alumni Magazine

NINI SARMIENTO, M.S. ’93, a graduate of the Publications Design program, has only been in the retail business a few short years. Yet she and her husband, Rob Degenhard, have already grown Home Anthology from a 400-square-foot shop in an antique cooperative to a 5,000-square-foot warehouse space where they pay homage to all things retro. Their store features mid-century modern furniture and other housewares from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

According to Sarmiento, the idea was born out of the couple’s own need to furnish their first home on a tight budget. They found home furnishings through estate sales and started picking up things for friends and family, too.When they realized they wanted to start their own business, they decided to make the hobby a full-time affair.

“Coming from a graphic design background, there’s something amazing about the forms,” says Sarmiento of her attraction to the mid-century look. “They’re so clean and different from traditional antique designs.” When the couple was in the antique co-op, other dealers often laughed at the wares they brought in for sale—huge lamps, Lucite dining room sets, sofas and chairs that could have been borrowed straight from a Jetsons cartoon—but Sarmiento and Degenhard are getting the last laugh. Hip young homeowners and buyers who may have grown up with these pieces and still appreciate it are eating up the retro look. Agencies and magazines often borrow their furniture for photo shoots. “It’s a different aesthetic, but a lot of people are very interested in it,” she explains. While there are items in the store that capture the look of Austin Powers kitsch, the store’s emphasis is on sleek designs, like a chrome dining room table with a rosewood top and a living room set by the Norwegian company Westnofa.

The couple only opens the shop on weekends because they spend their weeks trolling estate sales, following up on leads from individuals and hunting for new finds up and down the coast. “Every day is different,” says Sarmiento of the business. “You never know what each day will bring.”

Baltimore Style

Making it Work

If your dinner conversation plays like a "Honeymooners" episode, think twice about going into business together. But these six couples combine marriage and career without combusting.

by Sarah Achenbach
Photographed by Max Glanville

March/April 2005

Rob Degenhard and Nini Sarmiento
Owners, Home Anthology

Every marriage requires some adjustments. For Rob Degenhard and Nini Sarmiento, college sweethearts who met in 1986 at Loyola College and married in 1994, most of the adjustments take place in the driver’s seat of their 1992 Ford Club Wagon. With Nini at an even 5 feet and Rob at 6-feet-4, the driver’s seat, mirrors and lumbar support get changed daily depending on who’s behind the wheel while hauling merchandise for their vintage furniture business.

Size differences aside, it was their shared love of the clean lines, light wood and cheaper price tags of 1950s-era furniture that inspired their business. “We just got the bug knowing that you could go out and find wonderful things for cheap,” says Nini. After they married, they’d troll consignment stores and yard sales— even the streets of Homeland and Guilford the night before bulk trash day. Friends and family began asking them to find pieces, which ratcheted up their hobby to a part-time business.

In August 2002, they saw a booth for rent at a Cockeysville antiques mall and put down a deposit. “We were both unhappy with our jobs and decided to give ourselves the opportunity to try something really different,” says Nini, who at the time was a free-lance graphic designer. Four months later, she and Rob, who has had careers in youth ministry, insurance and fund-raising, made another on-the-spot decision to buy a used van for the business. That same month, Rob quit his full-time job and Nini followed suit in 2003.

Some people cautioned against working together, including the attorney who handled the business’ incorporation. “He also handled divorces and he told us to hang onto his card,” says Rob. “I think working together can be a pressure cooker for the relationship. All the issues you have in your household— finances, personalities— we have that twice over.”

Two and a half years later, though, things are cooking right along with a Web site (http://www.homeanthology.com) that draws customers from as far as Texas and California and a new store location, soon to be announced. (Until January, Home Anthology was located in Ellicott City’s Oella Mill.) “We’re working together toward a future and calling the shots,” says Nini. “We don’t have children, so this is our baby.” Rob concurs: “We’ve been very mindful of trying to make sure that both our relationship and our business grow in a positive way.”

And to make sure the electric seat adjustment in the van never wears out.