How to make an armor stand in Minecraft

The recipe

In a crafting table:

Stick   Stick   Stick
        Stick
Stick  Stone   Stick
       Slab

Six sticks and one smooth stone slab. The slab goes in the bottom middle, one stick directly above it, three sticks along the top row and one on each side of the middle row.

Sticks come from any planks, so the real cost is the stone slab. Our smooth stone guide covers making those if you are out.

Using it

Right click with armour to put it on, or right click an empty stand with an item to have it hold one. Crouch and right click to swap what is in a specific slot. Breaking it drops the stand and everything on it.

Armor stands take damage from most sources and can be destroyed by mobs, explosions and fire, so a display of enchanted gear in an open room is not as safe as it looks.

They also hold heads, banners, pumpkins and, in newer versions, any item at all in the hand slot, which is how most decorative weapon racks are built.

Giving it arms and poses

In Java Edition the crafted stand has no arms and cannot be posed without commands. Both are set with data on the entity:

/summon armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {ShowArms:1b}
/summon armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {ShowArms:1b,NoBasePlate:1b,Small:1b}

ShowArms adds the arms, NoBasePlate removes the stone base, Small makes it the baby sized version, and Invisible hides the stand while leaving the armour floating, which is how most floating item displays are made.

Bedrock Edition is different. Stands there have arms by default and can be posed by crouching and interacting, with no commands needed.

On a server

Summoning stands with data needs operator level 2 and command blocks enabled, which most survival servers keep off for good reason. Our command block guide explains why and what the safer alternatives are.

Plenty of servers instead install a plugin that gives every player a pose editor menu, which is safer than handing out operator and is usually what a build server means when it advertises armor stand tools.

Watch the entity count. Armor stands are entities, and a decorative build with hundreds of them in one chunk costs real server performance even though nothing is moving.