Peter Minshall

Peter Minshall (born 16 July 1941) is a Trinidadian Carnival artist (described colloquially in Trinidad and Tobago as a "mas-man").

Minshall was born in Georgetown, Guyana, but moved to Trinidad as a small child after his father took a job as a cartoonist. Growing up in the capital, Port of Spain, Minshall was exposed to Carnival from a young age. He made his first costume at the age of 13. He attended Queen's Royal College, then went on to study Theatre Design at the Central School of Art and Design in London.

Peter Minshall designed Carnival costumes for various relatives and family friends, even before he left school. At art school, he wrote a thesis on the bat (a traditional Carnival character) and his first major theatrical commission, for a production at Sadler's Wells, came after a director saw a portfolio of his Carnival designs.

When Minshall's mother asked him to create a costume for his adopted sister Sherry-Ann Guy (Coelho) to wear for carnival 1974, it was the pivotal event in Minshall's Carnival career. The costume he created was called "From the Land of the Hummingbird". According to him, it took five weeks, 12 people, 104 feathers, each one made of 150 different pieces of fabric. The costume was designed to allow its wearer total mobility and was an immediate sensation. It also became a major icon of Trinidad Carnival.

The following year, Minshall designed a band for London's Notting Hill Carnival, and in 1976 he was asked by veteran bandleaders Stephen and Elsie Lee Heung to design a full-size band for Trinidad Carnival. Minshall chose the theme Paradise Lost, which was inspired by Milton's epic poem. The band was conceived in four "movements", like a symphony, and introduced a form of winged costume based on Minshall's study of traditional Carnival characters, which he would continue to develop over the course of his career. As Paradise Lost paraded through the streets of the city, a grand narrative unfolded, astounding onlookers. One observer, the photographer Roy Boyke, remarked, "It is doubtful that the work of any single individual has had so searing an impact on the consciousness of an entire country."

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