# Gallery ledger

> A gallery set as an index rather than a grid: four ruled rows, each with a small numeral in the left margin, one panoramic 21:9 frame in the middle and a title with a tracked meta line on the right. Includes replaceable example photographs cropped to the band. States no colour and no font of its own.

Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/gallery-ledger.html
Section: Gallery
Access: Included in Pattern Paste access.
Needs: Requires a block theme on WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Classic themes and page builders are outside our supported setup. Adaptive patterns use the block theme’s colour, spacing and typography presets; styled variations declare their own colours or type.
Blocks: column, columns, group, heading, image, paragraph
Keywords: gallery, index, ledger, list, panoramic, rules, archive

## Variations (2)

### Paper index (the default)

Identical markup in every theme.

Your base colour as the ground, your contrast as the type, and a hairline in the text's own colour above every row. Four entries numbered 01 to 04, each a 21:9 band with its title and place-and-year beside it; on a phone each entry stacks to numeral, frame, title, and the rules stay.

### Ink ledger

Identical markup in every theme.

The band inverts: your contrast colour as the ground and your base as every word in it, headings included. The rows, the widths and the frames are identical, so the same index reads as a dark plate between two light sections.


---

## The signature moment: the gallery reads as a ledger

Four rows, each ruled off from the one above by a 1px `currentColor` hairline,
with an index numeral in the left margin and a meta line on the right. The
section is scanned like an index of works rather than browsed like a grid: the
photographs are entries in a list, not tiles on a wall, and the eye runs down
the numerals and the rules instead of across a mosaic.

It survives colourlessness because the whole device is hairlines, numerals and
alignment. There is no wash, no tint and no accent anywhere in it: the rules
are `currentColor`, so they are whatever the theme paints text, and the
numerals are the same colour as everything else, distinguished by size and
tracking rather than by hue. Take every colour away and the ledger is still a
ledger.

It survives 390px because a ledger is defined by its rules, not by its columns.
Core stacks `core/columns` below 782px, so each entry becomes numeral, then
frame, then title and meta, in one ruled block. The hairline sits on the row
GROUP rather than between the columns, so it does not stack with them: on a
phone each entry is still fenced top and bottom, still numbered, still read in
order. What is lost is the left margin, and what is kept is the index.

The hairlines are per-side group borders, not `core/separator` blocks. Twenty
Twenty-Four narrows any separator that is not `is-style-wide` to a centred
stub, and a group border is the shape that cannot be narrowed. The last row
carries a bottom border as well as a top one, so the index closes rather than
trailing off.

## What it inherits, what it decides

Inherits: every colour (the band is a `base` chain, all type a `contrast`
chain, every rule `currentColor`), the typeface, and the spacing scale
(`spacing|70` above and below the band, `spacing|50` under the intro row,
`spacing|40` inside each row, `spacing|30` between stacked columns and
`spacing|20` between a title and its meta line).

Decides: the ledger itself. The 1240px measure and the clamp gutters; the
8 / 60 / 32 column split, which gives the frame roughly 700px at 1400 so a
21:9 band is a band and not a strip; the row rhythm, which comes from padding
on the row group rather than from block gap, so the hairlines sit tight against
the rows they fence; the type proportion, a 13px numeral and a 13px meta line
in wide caps against a `clamp(1.125rem, 1.6vw, 1.5rem)` title at 1.15 with a
touch of negative tracking. The title states its own clamp because it is read;
the numeral and the meta line are genuinely incidental labels, both well under
30 characters, which is the only place a flat 13px belongs.

## What a buyer changes first

The photographs. **All four image blocks include example photographs**; choose Replace to select an image from your media library, and the `21/9` aspect ratio with `scale: cover` crops it. Panoramic
subjects suit it; a portrait crops hard and that is the point of the
proportion being set for them.

Then the entries. The numerals are plain text, so an index of six is two more
rows copied and renumbered, and an index of three is one row deleted; nothing
else needs touching, because the rules and the rhythm belong to the rows. Keep
each title short enough to hold one or two lines in a 32% column, and keep the
meta line to a place and a year, or anything else under about 20 characters,
so the tracking still reads as tracking.

## Variations

- **Ink ledger**: the band inverts. A `contrast` chain becomes the ground and a
  `base` chain becomes every word in it, including each heading's own explicit
  text colour, because a theme's heading element style beats an inherited group
  colour and would otherwise paint the titles the same colour as the plate. The
  hairlines are `currentColor` in both files and need no change at all: they
  follow the type from dark-on-light to light-on-dark by themselves, which is
  the argument for `currentColor` in one line. Rows, widths, frames and
  everything else are identical to the base.

## Measured

The base and the variation both take every colour and typeface from the theme.
Both were checked in the editor, rendered and looked at.

## Included images

The copied markup includes WordPress Photo Directory example photographs. The public image URLs
keep the examples visible after pasting. Select an image or cover and choose
**Replace** to use your own Media Library files. See [image credits](/image-credits/)
for the sources and licenses. Pasting an image URL does not import a Media Library
attachment.
