“It was a family crest ring, which I’d never seen before.” In 1999, Ms. Schneider, by then a self-taught jewelry maker, moved to Los Angeles with the hope of getting costume designers to use ...

“And then before I knew it, everybody was like, ‘Have you seen Kuku’s jewelry?’” (“Kuku is the short form of Akunna,” she said, calling it a pet name that family members use for her ...