Attaching lipid bilayers to solid substrates in such a way that they exhibit properties analagous to cell membranes found in Nature is becoming of increasing interest. Such systems have the potential to be used as biosensors and for fundamental studies of cell membranes. In this paper we present a novel method of attaching such lipid bilayers to gold substrates using microcontact printing to produce a patterned surface of sub-micron size patterns onto which a lipid layer is added. Microcontact printing has been used to form patterns of lipophilic Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on gold with dimensions of 500 nm or less. These patterns consist of a regular array of hydrophilic and hydrophobic patches. Onto these patterned SAMs, lipid bilayers have been formed over the hydrophilic patches by lipid vesicle rupture and self-assembly. Investigation of lipid bilayers on these small nanometer scale patterns compared with larger micrometer scale patterns of lipopilic SAMs, by both Impedance Spectroscopy and Surface Plasmon Spectroscopy have suggested that vesicle adsorption followed by rupture at hydrophilic-hydrophobic SAM interfaces may be a crucial part of the mechanism of bilayer formation on such patterned SAMs. Finally, ion-selective peptides and proteins including Valinomycin and Gramicidin have been inserted into the bilayer patches, and the expected ion-selectivity observed experimentally.