I don't have a clear picture of his intent, but I'll toss this out: As a tile backer and/or shower surround, a mud job is king. It allows the walls to be floated perfectly plumb and square, and with mesh properly embedded in and wrapped around the mud wall corners, you can actually grout your shower's inside corners instead of caulking them. It's rock solid construction. Now moving on, he mentioned "acrylic or fiberglass" for the shower floor and or portions of the walls. I translate this as a manufactured acrylic shower pan and an acrylic shower surround unit. Installing an acrylic surround over a mud job doesn't quite make sense to me. Or were those offered as two different choices? In an ideal world, I'd use the floated mud walls as the base structure. Kerdi over that would give you topical waterproofing. Tile/glass over that and you have an installation that will last for generations. An acrylic or fiberglass surround, it really depends on the quality of the unit. Lesser quality units, especially flimsy bases, can flex and crack around the drain, sometimes in a matter of years. Better quality ones can perform well for years. As to a waste of money, I don't think a mud job is a waste of money unless it's to be covered by an acrylic surround. I don't think Kerdi is a waste of money unless it's to be covered with an acrylic surround. A cheap acrylic surround can be a waste of money, a failure in the unit can cause unseen water damage, if it's flimsy and the base flexes underfoot it can give an uneasy feeling when standing in the unit. A good quality acrylic surround can give excellent value for the dollar and perform very well. But it can be installed over drywall. All totally my opinion. Could he have been describing an acrylic or fiberglass waterproofing over the mud job? I think I'm not fully understanding his intentions.

it could be walker zangir i looked at something that for behind my stove, looked just like that from them but it was so expensive, out of my budget...too bad its so pretty. you can go to their webpage.

That has the look of marble (very hard to tell, but the gray/white has unique colouring for each piece...which normally points to natural materials). A similar look would come from encaustic tiles. They are known to do geometric patterns in gray/white in this theme.

See if there is anything you like at House of Antique Hardware website. I think they were more in the $120 range but I am not completely sure as I was looking at lots of websites in my search for appliance pulls. Appliance pulls are pretty expensive - especially if you want anything with a bit of panache. Of course you don't need that many :-)