For over a decade, the Pangborn Collection had a high-profile shop at Detroit Metro Airport. Many airport shops had been unhappy that heightened post-9/11 security took effect just as the McNamara Terminal opened at DTW in early 2002, making it virtually impossible for anyone to visit them unless they were flying. But Dominic Pangborn loved it: “All that security eliminated all loitering and theft!” The location also gave him a base of international customers, like the man from Hawaii who always routed his layover through Detroit so he could shop at Pangborn’s store.

A few years ago Pangborn moved the collection to the Michigan Design Center in Troy, but he says that turned out to be a mistake. “It’s a showcase for interior designers,” but the out-of-the way location took him off the retail map. Ann Arbor’s Main St., he says, is where he belongs.

Pangborn is part artist, part designer, and part retailer, though he mainly leaves that last part to his wife, Delia, and manager Neil Van Houten, who do all the buying of the museum-quality merchandise that isn’t designed by Pangborn himself: tea kettles designed by Frank Gehry and Michael Graves, a lemon squeezer designed by Philippe Starck, and other home goods by Ettore Sottsass and Richard Sapper.

Originally a graphic artist, Pangborn still has a business called Pangborn Design, which he’s recently turned over to his son Oliver. He’s fascinated with bold, fixed images that seem to move, like his multi-planed painting that won third place in the three-dimensional category at this year’s ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. A similar three-dimensional work will shortly be installed on the outside facade of the Main St. store. Inside, his artwork can also be found on everything from textiles to luggage.

Pangborn is the name of the family in Jackson that adopted him at age ten–his birth mother is Korean; his father an unknown American GI. “Pangborn is an English name. It’s the name of a place–a lot of English names end in ‘born.’ But people see it and think it’s exotic. I’ve been asked if I’m Cambodian or Laotian,” he smiles.

Pangborn Collection, 335 S. Main, 214-1200. Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Closed Mon. pangborncollection.com