The lamination of composite elements such as sheets or fibres made from ceramic powders represents a cheap and easy way of making tough ceramics. The fabrication and failure behaviour of such layered structures is described. It is shown that crack growth along the interfaces is dominated by dynamic effects due to the storage of excess elastic energy and that effects of loading state, in the silicon carbide/graphite system at least, appear to be relatively unimportant. Crack deflection at interfaces is also discussed and it is shown that observations made in these systems are not consistent with existing theories. Various possibilities are investigated.