How to Get Pottery Sherds in Minecraft

In Short
  • Pottery sherds are archeological items that are used in crafting recipe for the decorated pots in Minecraft.
  • You can get most pottery sherds by using a brush on suspicious sand and gravel blocks in various structures.
  • Three newest sherds can only be obtained when breaking decorated pots in trial chambers.

Decorated pots are one of the most unique decorative block in Minecraft. They have various crafting recipes depending on what you want them to display. For that you’ll need pottery sherds, items you get mostly through archaeology. In this guide, we’ll show you what pottery sherds exist and how you can acquire them in Minecraft. With that said, let’s begin!

List of All Types of Pottery Shards

There is a total of 23 pottery shards in the world of Minecraft, and those include:

  • Angler Pottery Sherd (Fishing rod)
  • Archer Pottery Sherd (Bow and arrow)
  • Arms Up Pottery Sherd (Person with hands in the air)
  • Blade Pottery Sherd (Sword)
  • Brewer Pottery Sherd (Potion)
  • Burn Pottery Sherd (Fire)
  • Danger Pottery Sherd (Creeper)
  • Explorer Pottery Sherd (Map)
  • Friend Pottery Sherd (Villager)
  • Heart Pottery Sherd (Heart)
  • Heartbreak Pottery Sherd (Broken heart)
  • Howl Pottery Sherd (Wolf)
  • Miner Pottery Sherd (Pickaxe)
  • Mourner Pottery Sherd (Warden)
  • Plenty Pottery Sherd (Treasure chest)
  • Prize Pottery Sherd (Diamond)
  • Sheaf Pottery Sherd (Wheat)
  • Shelter Pottery Sherd (Tree)
  • Skull Pottery Sherd (Skeleton skull)
  • Snort Pottery Sherd (Sniffer)
  • Flow Pottery Sherd (Spiral)
  • Guster Pottery Sherd (Breeze)
  • Scrape Pottery Sherd (Axe)
All pottery sherds in Minecraft

Each of these pottery shards has a unique symbol on them that relates to their name. Furthermore, the same symbol shows up when you turn the pottery shards into a pot.

What Do You Need to Get Pottery Sherds?

Now that you know the basics of pottery shards, let’s see what you need to collect them. Most pottery sherds are part of loot tables from suspicious sand and suspicious gravel blocks. They are fairly similar to regular sand and gravel blocks, but their textures are more detailed.

Differences between suspicious blocks and regular sand and gravel

Once you spot this block, don’t break it with a shovel. Instead, you’ll need to make a brush. This tool will allow you to carefully extract a pottery sherd out of the suspicious blocks. Its crafting recipe requires one stick, one feather, one copper ingot and a crafting table.

Crafting recipe for a brush

How to Find Pottery Sherds in Minecraft

You’ll find suspicious blocks in these structures:

  • Desert Well
  • Desert Pyramid/Temple
  • Trail Ruins
  • Warm Ocean Ruins
  • Cold Ocean Ruins

Now, follow these steps to obtain pottery sherds:

First, go to one of the structures listed above, for instance, a desert pyramid. Then, you need to look for suspicious sand blocks. They might hide below some other blocks, so be careful not to break them by accident.

When you find them, select your brush on the hotbar and use the right-click or secondary action button on the block. An animation will start playing and a random item will start popping out of the block. If you’re lucky, it’s going to be a pottery sherd. Also, your brush will lose one durability in the process, but you can also enchant it so it lasts longer.

Player using a brush on a suspicious sand block to get pottery sherds

This is the case for most pottery sherds, but not for all of them. You can obtain three pottery sherds in a different way. You’ll need to go to the trial chamber structure and find decorated pots, which are usually in the corridor.

They may have a completely unique design on one of their sides, which represents one of the Flow, Guster, or Scrape sherds. Break this pot with a tool, like a pickaxe to make it split into its parts to collect these special sherds.

Player breaking a decorated pot in trial chamber to get a pottery sherd

How to Use Pottery Sherds

Once you find four pottery sherds, you simply need to combine them in a crafting table using the crafting recipe shown below. Since each pottery sherd only reflects one face of the pot, you can use any type of pottery sherd while making a pot, as well as one or all four sherds. If you’re making a pot with 1-3 sherds, then add brick items to complete the recipe.

The sherd you place in the bottommost row of the grid will be on the side of the pot that always faces toward you when you place it. The design in the upper row will face away from you and the sherds left and right will be on the left and right sides respectively.

  • Crafting recipe for a decorated pot
  • Crafting recipe for a decorated pot with one pottery sherd and three bricks

Whether you want to decorate your Minecraft house or create an archaeological custom map, the pottery sherds are here to help. They provide such a unique way to decorate your surroundings, so if you haven’t already, make sure to give decorated pots a shot.

Not only are they pretty, but also have cool interactions with redstone since snapshot 23W41A. Having said that, which is your favorite type of pottery sherd? Tell us in the comments below!

Can you duplicate pottery sherds?

Unfortunately, no. Pottery sherds don’t work like armor trims, so you cannot duplicate them.

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