I really don't want to go off into speculation land with the crafting system. I have very low expectations for it overall, and I want them to stay low.
Now, thinking positively for a minute, and taking what I believe is a "Realistic" Best-case scenario, when Forging Armor and weapons, you essentially select the material, and select the cultural influence of a weapon. So if you want a Daedric based Sword designed in the Elven Style? Glass Sword based on Orcish weaponsmithing techniques? Ect. Just for a Tangible Example, a Daedric two-handed Sword based on the Akavir techniques, would yield a "Daedric Dai-Katana".
That's an absolute best-case scenario, I am personally just thinking that "Elven Glass Shortsword" was a word-salad, since technically all Glass Equipment, is Elven in nature. (Since the Glass Mines are in Vvardenfell)
Thats looks really interesting, in such cases certain forms of smithing can have advantages and disadvantages for example increased and speed and decreased durability, maximum and minimum damage modifiers based on material and smithing technique as well as cost of item and time to develop, there can be common materials and easy to learn and work techniques (iron, bronze, copper, wood, leather) as well as rare materials and rare and hard techniques (ebony, daedric, glass) such techniques can be implemented as leveled perks in smithing skill, so need to learn base then improve it by leveling
Certain materials can be restricted to certain racial techs (Bonemold and chitin for dunmers, bosmers, but Nordic Iron and Stalhrim for Nords) while other can be more common and available for all (steel and iron)
Even if combinations based on such system will not in large numbers in vanilla Skyrim, having such system as base will be greatly expanded by mods.