The crafts movement has had to work hard to shake off its associations with rusticity. The former Craft Museum in New York has been renamed The Museum of Art and Design; the British Crafts Council’s annual fair, Collect, which takes place at the V&A in London, is subtitled “The international art fair for contemporary objects” (deftly sidestepping the word “craft” in the process).

More than 10,000 people attended Collect this year, and sales exceeded £1m. This is the revitalised, sophisticated world of “new craft”, which leaves images of chunky brown bowls and macramé hanging baskets far behind. It’s only a matter of time before beady-eyed dealers realise the commercial potential of this under-rated genre and pounce on it, much as they did with design (now fashionably termed Design-Art) and the prices start soaring. Witness designers such as Marc Newson and Ron Arad, whose prices have already exceeded the $1m mark. Newson had a recent show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York (its first major show of a designer) and Arad is set to join the Timothy Taylor Gallery in London.

Whatever your taste there is a vast selection on offer and now is the time to take advantage while prices are relatively low.

Adrian Sassoon in London offers museum-quality objects from an impressive rosta of artists, including sensuous hammered silver “double skinned” bowls by master metal worker Hiroshi Suzuki, whose prices have been steadily rising and are now in the region of £12,000, and Julian Stair, one of four potters in Sassoon’s exhibition of “Monumental Pots”, whose powerful site-specific clay vessels can tower to a height of 8ft and range from £12,000-£28,000.

In a different genre, London-based furniture maker Gareth Neal cleverly incorporates the structure and features of iconic antique designs into his witty, contemporary, one-off pieces. Working to commission, his prices start at about £7,000.

Thalia Georgoulis, represented by Sofie Lachaert, a Belgian gallery, has built an international reputation with her luxurious repertoire of quirky silverware – vodka shots, implements for eating oysters, silver and glass ice cream bowls and “cracked” silver platters, while silversmith William Phipps, in my opinion one of the most prominent craftsmen in the UK, is an alchemist who elevates lowly implements – vessels and cutlery – into items of exceptional functional beauty.

Charlotte Hodes, the Artist in Residence at the Wallace Collection in 2006, recently joined the Marlborough Gallery. In collaboration with Adriano Berengo, a glassmaker in Murano, a small body of unique jewelled coloured glass plaques incorporating delicate sensual female silhouettes and priced at £3,500 instantly sold out at a recent show in London. Her prices will inevitably rocket when she makes her Marlborough debut next year.

I have admired and collected Edmund de Waal’s elegant, minimalistic porcelain vessels for many years but a recent solo exhibition at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge saw his work move to a new sculptural level. His current commissions include an installation of 480 vessels on a massive red lacquer shelf within the dome of the new ceramics gallery at the V&A.

The Barrett Marsden Gallery in Clerkenwell London represents several artists working on the blurred boundaries between art, craft and design. Among them, Carol McNicoll and Richard Slee are brilliant potters making witty political observations in their work, which can be bought for less than £8,000. It is edgy work and smart collectors should be seeking it out.

Murray Moss, owner of the Moss stores in New York and Los Angeles, has a shrewd eye for spotting talent and nurturing it wisely. Top of my Moss list is the gifted Dutch artist Hella Jongerius, who represents “new craft” at its best. The creatively adaptable Jongerius designs furniture for Vitra, affordable china tableware for the Dutch porcelain company Royal Tichelaar Maaken and a range of cloisonné objects for the Japanese label Cibone, but her unique pieces include embroidered ceramic vessels and monumental hand-built earthenware structures embellished with bronze shields that take months to construct ($60,000-$90.000).

Antwerp-based Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel work together as Studio Job, combining craft, art and design in their limited edition work. “Robber Baron”, a series in cast, polished and gilded bronze is a “suite of furniture” from the residence of an imaginary robber baron, priced between $95,000 and $225,000.

Recent Eindhoven graduate Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny makes his New York debut at Moss in May with a series of intriguing, lyrical “beehive” vases cast from the wax of 40,000 bees. In common with Libertiny, recent Royal College of Art graduate Kelly McCallum represents craftsmanship at its most fanciful, far-fetched and innovative. Working with taxidermy encrusted with semi-precious stones McCallum creates weird haunting scenarios that transcend anything remotely “crafty” and yet are painstakingly, exquisitely crafted. McCallum’s work can be purchased for less than £10,000, but hurry – she is one of the Saatchi artists represented in this year’s Form Art and Design Fair at Olympia in london.

Libertiny and McCallum represent the wind of change that is moving craft forward in a contemporary art world that is always searching out something new.