Antimacassars were made to protect chair backs from the hair oil. Macassar oil was derived from Indian trees and named after Port Makassar, Indonesia. Rowland's was the most well-known brand name of hair oil, from the mid- to late-1800s.
In Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass is another connection to Alice in Wonderland:
"His accents mild took up the tale: / He said, 'I go my ways,
and when I find a mountain-rill, / I set it in a blazer
And thence they make a stuff they call / Rowland's Macassar Oil
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all / They give me for my toil."