Creating Custom Pottery Sherds

Before touching any JSON, it helps to understand where the hard boundaries are in the current Bedrock engine. The vanilla `minecraft:decorated_pot` block stores its four side patterns as strings inside its block actor data (NBT), and the renderer maps those strings to a hardcoded list of twenty vanilla sherd textures. There is no JSON component such as a 'pottery pattern' component that you can attach to a custom item to make it show up on a vanilla pot.

Because of this, add-on creators take one of three paths when making custom sherds. The simplest path is treating the sherd purely as a collectible trophy or crafting ingredient that yields a custom block. The second path is replacing one of the twenty vanilla sherd textures in the resource pack, which works on vanilla pots without experiments but sacrifices a built-in design. The third path is building a custom pot block with its own geometry and material instances, using script events to apply your sherd's texture to a face when clicked.

The sherd itself is a simple item with no special mechanics of its own. Using format version `1.20.50` or newer, you only need the icon, display name, and menu category. Vanilla sherds stack to 64 and sit inside the `items` category under the ingredients group.

Below is a complete item definition for a custom 'Sunburst Pottery Sherd'. The `minecraft:tags` component includes `minecraft:decorated_pot_sherds`, which is the vanilla item tag grouping all sherds together. Adding this tag lets your item match recipe inputs or script queries that check for any sherd, though as noted above, the vanilla pot's special four-slot recipe still ignores non-vanilla identifiers when picking face textures.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.80",
  "minecraft:item": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "wiki:sunburst_pottery_sherd",
      "menu_category": {
        "category": "items",
        "group": "itemGroup.name.potterySherds"
      }
    },
    "components": {
      "minecraft:max_stack_size": 64,
      "minecraft:icon": "wiki_sunburst_sherd",
      "minecraft:display_name": {
        "value": "item.wiki:sunburst_pottery_sherd.name"
      },
      "minecraft:tags": {
        "tags": [
          "minecraft:decorated_pot_sherds"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Every custom item needs its 16x16 inventory icon registered in `item_texture.json` inside the resource pack. Give the shortname the exact string you used in `minecraft:icon` in the behaviour pack.

Match the palette of the vanilla sherd sprite—terracotta browns (`#945642`, `#7b4434`, `#b36a52`) with a darker recessed stamp in the middle—so the item looks like it belongs next to vanilla sherds inside a bundle or chest.

{
  "resource_pack_name": "wiki_rp",
  "texture_name": "atlas.items",
  "texture_data": {
    "wiki_sunburst_sherd": {
      "textures": "textures/items/sunburst_pottery_sherd"
    }
  }
}

Players expect to obtain sherds by brushing `minecraft:suspicious_sand` or `minecraft:suspicious_gravel`. Unfortunately, Bedrock's suspicious blocks can only hold a single item stack, and you cannot set that stack via `/setblock` commands directly without saving a structure. In natural world generation, the game fills suspicious blocks using vanilla loot tables inside `BP/loot_tables/entities/` or `BP/loot_tables/archaeology/` depending on the structure.

Because modifying a vanilla archaeology loot table overrides the entire file and conflicts with other add-ons, the cleaner approach for custom structures is to place a pre-brushed custom suspicious block, or to save a `.mcstructure` file containing a vanilla `suspicious_sand` block whose loot table path has been pointed at your own file using an external NBT editor. The loot table itself must only ever return a single roll with a single item count of 1, because the brushable block entity only has one item slot.

{
  "pools": [
    {
      "rolls": 1,
      "entries": [
        {
          "type": "item",
          "name": "wiki:sunburst_pottery_sherd",
          "weight": 2
        },
        {
          "type": "item",
          "name": "minecraft:archer_pottery_sherd",
          "weight": 1
        },
        {
          "type": "item",
          "name": "minecraft:emerald",
          "weight": 4
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Since the hardcoded vanilla pot recipe will not render your custom pattern, the standard workaround is to define a custom block that shares the pot's silhouette and craft it with a shaped recipe. A shaped 3x3 cross of four `wiki:sunburst_pottery_sherd` items (or bricks mixed with your sherd) outputting `wiki:sunburst_decorated_pot` feels natural at a crafting table.

If you only want one or two new designs and do not need all twenty vanilla sherds in your world, consider the resource-pack-only route instead: place your 16x16 item sprite at `RP/textures/items/angler_pottery_sherd.png` and the matching 16x16 pot face texture inside `RP/textures/blocks/` over the corresponding vanilla decorated pot pattern file, then change its name in `RP/texts/en_US.lang`. That gives you full brushing, pot wobble animation, and arrow-shattering behaviour with zero behaviour pack code.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.10",
  "minecraft:recipe_shaped": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "wiki:sunburst_pot_from_sherds"
    },
    "tags": [
      "crafting_table"
    ],
    "pattern": [
      " S ",
      "B B",
      " S "
    ],
    "key": {
      "S": {
        "item": "wiki:sunburst_pottery_sherd"
      },
      "B": {
        "item": "minecraft:brick"
      }
    },
    "unlock": [
      {
        "item": "wiki:sunburst_pottery_sherd"
      }
    ],
    "result": {
      "item": "wiki:sunburst_decorated_pot",
      "count": 1
    }
  }
}

Applies to Bedrock Edition 1.20.80 and newer. No experimental toggles are required for the custom item, tags, or recipe shown here.

Read out of the game itself, so the ids match the version you are building for.