We had a "Golden Gate Stack Stone" back splash for six years. After the installation we coated it with "Miracle 511 Porous Plus," which was recommended and sold by the tile dealership. Never had a problem with cleanup behind the range, which I attribute to the sealant. We LOVED that back splash and plan to do it again in our new house.

Cirone, I don't blame you, I LOVE that tile too! Yourt photo is from the Kitchen Lab of Chicago. The designer has an awesome resource called www.designinabag.com. You can choose your room type, kitchen or bath, and browse through coordinated "sample bags" of tile, counter, cabinets, all put together by this designer. You can then order a sample bag for about $100 which will get you the sources. There are a lot of tiles similar to your pic. The exact one is shown in the designer's blog but doesn't say the source. It's from a Cottage Living issue from 08. Cottage Living is no longer published though :( Take a browse through Annsacks.com too, it's very, very similar to the Ceramic Art Tile-Coloured Earth collection. I'd like to keep looking and offering help but it's killing me to look at all that beautiful hand painted tile, makes me want to rip my backsplash out!

It looks like a nice warm white from my computer. I would suggest waiting till you can hold samples up in the actual room before pulling the trigger on the backsplash. Gray can have different undertones & you want to get it right. A slight color could really work well here too. BUT, in the meantime I would look at Fireclay, Encore, Tilebar, AnnSacks for tiles. Here are a few ideas. TILEBAR- FIRECLAY- Check out all these awesome colors & the come in different sizes & shapes too. https://www.fireclaytile.com/subway-tile/colors

Be VERY careful with Carrera marble from any big box stores. One cannot choose ones tiles - they come by the box and it's not unusual for half or more of a box to be tiles that don't match. And no, they cannot be returned! I had very good luck with consistent color with my Carrera marble large subway tiles I bought from https://www.carraratiles.com. They were very easy to work with, knew what color their tiles were coming in (white/more gray) and actually assigned them a dye lot number. Mine came in uniformly white and my tile setter said he never had to even look in the boxes and select a "good one" - he just took them out as they came, they were so even. None of that "order 20% more for color matching" nonsense.