Jens Quisgaard’s Kobenstyle line of enamelled steel cookware for Dansk began in autumn 1955 as seen in the following Neiman-Marcus ads from December 1955. It is interesting to note that there is absolutely no connection with Dansk or Jens Quisgaard in the text of these ads. My best guess is that both Dansk and Jens Quistgaard were not considered recognisable enough to be included in Neiman Marcus’s advertisements at the time.
Kobenstyle was initially produced in Denmark and available in four colours in its first year was: turquoise, yellow, red and lime green.
The lime green colour was very quickly withdrawn from production, the other three colours, turquoise, red and yellow were very popular and were widely produced over the following 10 years.
In late 1959, the Dansk logo was changed to give it a more universal look and be usable for the entire line. Nothing was changed about the line itself, which remained the same.
The next major changes came in late 1965 (as reported on page 169 of the 4 December 1965 issue of the New Yorker).This is the point when the first new designs in a decade are introduced for the Kobenstyle line, the pans are changed and from then on have teak handles, the colours are changed and production moves from Denmark to France.
Kobenstyle colours as of 1965 are: red, a new variant the colour yellow called “Gold of the Sun” and blue.
Everything remains the same until 1971 after that Dansk decides to change the Kobenstyle line again and add two new colours, black and white. The black and white colours are relatively short-lived and are only produced for two years.
Other colours will follow: Kumquat (orange), which was available 1973-1975, the green colour is added to the line again, but is short-lived(1974-1976). The colour brown is available in 1975 and is in production until 1983. Blue is temporarily out of production from 1975 to 1977, but then available again until 1985.
The production of Dansk Kobenstyle kept on going, so the line was also released in Japan and Indonesia. A new label called Dansk International was created for this purpose.
Kobenstyle was recently re-released in 2012, the same familiar shapes are again available exclusively in the shop in red, white and blue.