Ceramic membranes have been formed from colloidal sols coated on porous clay supports. These supported membranes have been characterized in terms of their permeabilities and permselectivities to various aqueous test solutions. The thermal stabilities and pore structures of these membranes have been characterized by preparing unsupported membranes of the correpsonding material and performing N{sub 2} adsorption-desorption and X-ray diffraction studies on these membranes. To date, membranes have been prepared from a variety of oxides, including TiO{sub 2}, SiO{sub 2}, ZrO{sub 2}, and Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}, as well as Zr-, Fe-, and Nb-doped TiO{sub 2}. In many of these membranes pore diameters are less than 2 nm, while in others the pore diameters are between 3 and 5 nm. Procedures for fabricating porous clay supports with reproducible permeabilities for pure water are also discussed. 30 refs., 59 figs., 22 tabs.