Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
anti-macassar
also antimacassar, 1852, from anti- + macassar oil, proprietary name of a hair tonic advertised as imported from the district of Macassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The cloth was laid to protect chair and sofa fabric from people leaning their oily heads back against it.
Usage examples of "anti-macassar".
Mingott when the burden of flesh descended on her, and in the adjoining one she spent her days, enthroned in a large armchair between the open door and window, and perpetually waving a palm-leaf fan which the prodigious projection of her bosom kept so far from the rest of her person that the air it set in motion stirred only the fringe of the anti-macassars on the chair-arms.