The game's creators intend to expand the crafting mechanics.
The creators of Terraria have released their November development diary and talked about the progress in preparing for the launch of update 1.4.5.
As for the timing: the launch window remains the same [mid-December - late January] - although January is more likely at the moment, unless we get lucky with faster-than-expected patch certification submissions. We will do our best to narrow this down. We'll know a lot more once we complete the first round of submissions.
The Terraria team has also prepared a "spoiler" for update 1.4.5 - an updated crafting interface:
The developers are positioning this as "next-generation crafting in Terraria" - they are not only changing the interface, but the game will also have the ability to "craft items from nearby chests" (you won't have to constantly open them to use the contents):
This new approach to the crafting interface combines the best of what already worked great in "Journey" mode. These changes have also affected the recipe interface in the guide. Now you can quickly navigate through the huge number of possible crafting recipes for any material thanks to the "tabbed" categories and text search. This is especially useful with the new changes that allow you to craft items from nearby chests that will appear in Terraria 1.4.5.
